8 Inventory: products, services and price books

• 8 Inventory: products, services and price books
• 8.1.1 Products bundle
• 8.2 Product Lines
• 8.3 Services
• 8.4 Price Books
• 8.5 Products and Services Import/ Export
• 8.6 Inventory : Terms & Conditions
• 8.1.2 Configurable products and product variants

8 Inventory: products, services and price books

To manage the sales process via vtenext, first you must define the products/services catalogue, then the specific price books and product lines. These actions make it possible to manage diversified sales activities, customer types that require price diversification, and the vendors purchasing cycle.

As for the other vtenext modules, to create a product simply click on the icon in the module.

Key fields:

Product Name	Name of product
Product Code	This value appears in Quotes, Sales Orders, Invoices and Delivery Notes
Vendor	Allows the product vendor record to be linked
Product active	If active, the product is available for sale (this means that inactive products cannot be entered in quotes, orders, etc.)

Unit Price	Unit sale price, proposed in the quote, order, etc.
Unit Cost	Purchase cost
Quantity in Stock	Quantity in stock; this value is decreased on creation of an Invoice and increased on creation of a Purchase Order (in Status = Shipment Received)
Reorder Level	Quantity threshold for reorder

In Pricing Information you can also enter tax and tax percentage, these parameters however requiring an administrator side setting.

• Taxes are defined in Settings > Tax calculation
• Currencies must be defined in Settings > Currency

8.1.1 Products bundle

You can create and manage product bundles by defining parent-child type inter-product relationships. Product bundles are useful when managing complex products, meaning “parent” products composed of multiple single “child” products.

For example: a fully assembled computer could be classified as a single product because it can be sold ready and assembled by your organisation. Frequently however, it is the customer who wishes to choose the components, in which case a bundle of products must be defined.

The relations menu in the product record contains the Bundle Products (single products) box and the Parent Product Box (showing the main product to which the current product relates). This hierarchy is used to create quotes, sales orders and purchase orders.

To create a bundle you need to access the parent product record and, in Product Bundle, select Add (to create a new product) or Select (to link a product already present in the database).

The parent product will appear in the child product record as shown in the figure:

Warning! The price of the parent product is not equivalent to the sum of the prices of the child products because the single prices are defined freely.

8.2 Product Lines

A product Line combines a group of products that meet the same type of needs. In simple terms, a product line can be a goods category, such as Hardware, Software, or Services.

vtenext allows you to create such groups using the Product Line module. The record for the line includes a name, an assignee user, a description and an Annual Budget. This budget, which must be set year by year, constitutes a profit program estimate for the product group in question.

The Products option in the Relations menu can be used to access a list of all the products associated with the line in question and to add new ones.

The product lines module produce the statistics present within each linked potentials in addition it generates the statistics  within Budget tab  linked to all the existing  potentials in the CRM.
For more information regards the impact of the product lines is suggested to read the chapter 9.4 Budget.

8.3 Services

Like the Products module, designed to distinguish the catalogue of physical products in the inventory, the Services module distinguishes services such as training and assistance packages, defined by a duration (hours, days, years).

Key fields of the Services record:

Service Name	Name of the service
Usage Unit and Number of Units	State the unit of measurement of the service and the number of units
Active	Active means available for sale (this means that inactive services cannot be entered in quotes, orders, etc.)

Taxes are treated with the same configuration as that described for the Products module.

8.4 Price Books

The function of a price book is to collect a set of products whose price changes compared to the unit price, defined in the product record. To create a price book, click on .

To avoid confusion, the Price Book must be given a unique name. The program also allows the insertion of a description for possible future reference. Refer to the information given for the Products and Services modules in relation to the relevant fields.

Once you have associated a product/ service to a price list, you can retrieve the price list when you are filling out invoices, quotations and sale orders.

By clicking the icon , on on every product line, it is possible to display the list of the price books which includes the product and select the desired one.

8.5 Products and Services Import/ Export

With the export and import functions, you can exchange vtenext data with a large number of third-party programs. All product/service data can be exported or imported in .csv format. For details on the import/export procedure, please refer to the relevant chapter.

8.6 Inventory : Terms & Conditions

You can reach this option from Settings > Other settings > Inventory: Terms and conditions. It allows you to formulate the terms of sale which will automatically appear each time a quote is filled in.

8.1.2 Configurable products and product variants

From vtenext 20.04 it is possible to manage product variants with the new module Configurable Products. By following the logics of a normal e-commerce we can manage father products and the related variants. Let’s make an example to better understand this function.

Product Name	Features names	Possible values
iPhone	Memory	32Gb, 64Gb, 128Gb
	Color	Black, White, Gold
T-Shirt	Size	S, M, L, XL, XXL
	Color	White, Red, Green

For each father product it is possible to create infinite variations. Let’s see how:

Creation of a Configurable Product with Variants

Detail of a configurable product with values

In the end a product will have to be created (from the vtenext standard Products module), and then we can select the pre set variables as shown in the image below. The product’s name, for example iPhone 32Gb, and the selected variables will be Memory 32Gb and Color Black.
Moreover, it will be possible to add a SKU (Stock Keeping Unit) code for the product. This identification code of a warehouse-managed item is usually assigned to a product in order to identify it.

Detail product with variant information set

When a new quote is filled in it will be possible to create a new iPhone product, like we can see in the example, this will allow us to search all the possible variants. Note that, from the quote module, the research of products with variants works only if at least a product with the related variant exists.

Detail of research of products with variants in the quote module

Detail of selected product in the quote module: variants are inserted in the product description