Product catalog entities

 

Applies To: Dynamics CRM 2013

The product catalog entities let you create a full-featured product catalog in Microsoft Dynamics CRM that includes support for complex pricing models. The product catalog supports many products, multiple pricing models, and complex discounting models. The products can be sold separately, included in a kit (a product catalog item that consist of one or more products), or used as substitute products.

A product is either a physical inventory item (such as lumber or a nail), or a service (such as a haircut or tree pruning) that a company sells. Products from the product catalog can be used to build quotes and orders, and can be associated with opportunities or service cases. In addition, each product can contain links to sales literature and links to information about competitors and their products. A product catalog is a collection of products with their pricing information.

Price lists contain one to many individual product prices, aggregated together into a list for categorization purposes. This enables easier maintenance and usability of the list.

A unit is a measurement that specifies in what quantity a product will be sold. A unit group contains one to many types of unit of measurement, as calculated from a base unit. A product is tied to a unit group in which it is sold.

Discounts enable a product to have different sales prices, depending on the quantity purchased.

A discount list is an aggregation of different discounts, specifying how much of a discount the user can receive when the purchasing amount falls between certain ranges. Discount lists can exist at each quantity level, together with detail lines that contain the quantity breakpoints, and the reduction in the price.

Pricing options are configurations that enable a business unit to control how prices are calculated in Microsoft Dynamics CRM. Pricing option parameters that you can configure are quantity selling options, pricing method, rounding policy, and the rounding option.

You can perform the following operations on a product:

  • Create

  • Update

  • Delete (Not recommended)

  • Deactivate (You should deactivate products that are no longer available instead of deleting them, because they are included in past orders, quotes, or opportunities.)

  • Search (Either by product name or part number)

Other operations for a product include the following:

  • Associate with an account

  • Associate with other products (as a substitute)

  • Associate with knowledge base subjects

  • Add a note or attachment

  • Associate with a kit

  • Associate with a case

  • Associate with sales literature

  • Associate with a competitor

  • Incorporate into a quote

  • Associate with a sales quota

  • Add to an invoice

  • Add to a sales order

In This Section

Pricing methods

Discount entity messages and methods

DiscountType (discount list) entity messages and methods

PriceLevel (price list) entity messages and methods

Product entity messages and methods

ProductPriceLevel (price list item) entity messages and methods

UoM (unit) entity messages and methods

UoMSchedule (unit group) entity messages and methods

Model your business data

Sales literature entities