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Manage product variants

Item variants are a great way to keep your list of products under control. For example, you have a large number of items that are almost identical and vary only in color. You can define each variant as a separate item. But you can also choose to set up one item and specify the various colors as variants of the item.

Tip

For a practical introduction to using variants in production, see Walkthrough: Variants for the Contoso Coffee demo data.

Add variants to an item

It's easy enough to define variants for an item.

To add variants

  1. Open the Items List page, open the relevant item.
  2. On the Item card, choose the Related action, then choose Item, and then choose the Variants action.
  3. On the Item Variants page, list the variants.

Then, when you create a sales document and add the item, you can specify the variant of the item in the Variant Code field. The same applies to purchasing documents.

Add attributes to variants

You can assign attributes that are specific to a variant. Item variants inherit attributes from the item, and you can adjust or remove those inherited values when the variant requires different information.

You can open the Item Variant Attribute Values page from the Item Variants List or the Item Variant Card pages to review or edit variant-specific attributes. When you add a new variant of an item, the attributes defined for the item transfer to the variant. You can then update or delete the inherited values to ensure the variant shows the correct details.

There's also the Update Variant Attributes action on the Item Card page that lets you to force sync attributes from the item to its variants.

Add a picture to a variant

Adding pictures of item variants can reduce confusion when working with large assortments of similar variants. Tiles and tall tiles modes on the list can help you quickly identify each variant, which improves accuracy in the variant selection, manufacturing, fulfillment, and sales processes.

  1. Open the Item Card and choose the Variants action.

  2. Select the variant that you want to update.

  3. On the Item Variant Card, in the Picture FactBox, choose one of the following actions:

    • Import to upload a file.
    • Take to use your device camera to capture an image.
    • Export if you want to save the current image.
    • Delete if you don't want the picture.

Item availability by variant

When you open the Item Availability by Variant page from a document line, then you can insert a variant in the document line by selecting the line with the variant that you want to insert and then choosing the OK button. If you've only used the page to view availability and don't want to insert a variant, then close the page without choosing the OK button.

The page shows one line for each period. Each line shows the item’s availability figures in the following key fields:

Field Description
Gross Requirement Specifies the sum of the total demand for the item. The gross requirement consists of independent demand and dependent demand. Independent demand includes sales orders, service orders, transfer orders, and production forecasts. Dependent demand includes production order components for planned, firm planned, and released production orders. It also includes requisition and planning worksheets lines.
Scheduled Receipt Specifies the sum of items from replenishment orders. The calculation includes firm planned and released production orders, purchase orders, and transfer orders.
Planned Order Receipt Specifies the sum of items from planned production orders.
Projected Available Balance Specifies the calculated available inventory.
Planned Order Releases Specifies the sum of items from replenishment order proposals. The calculation includes planned production orders. it also includes planning or requisition worksheets lines that are calculated according to the starting date in the planning worksheet and production order or the order date in the requisition worksheet. This sum isn't included in the projected available inventory. However, it indicates which quantities should be converted from planned to scheduled receipts.

Require use of variants

Administrators can require that users specify the variant in documents and journals for items that have variants. To activate the capability, on the Inventory Setup page, and select the Variant Mandatory if Exists field. You can override this global setting for specific items.

On item cards, the Variant Mandatory if Exists field has the following options:

Field value Description
Default (No) The setting from Inventory Setup applies to this item.
No Users aren't required to specify a variant for this item.
Yes If the item has one or more variants, users must specify the relevant variant. If they don't, they're blocked from posting the transaction.

Note

These settings don't affect items that don't have variants.

If the capability is switched on, you can't post an entry if the variant isn't specified.

Categories, attributes, and variants

Categories and attributes are two different ways of grouping inventory items. Item variant is a way to indicate that a specific item is available in different colors or sizes, for example. Depending on how you set up your inventory, you can use categories to group chairs versus desks, and then use attributes to group green items versus blue items, for example. You can then supplement this setup by adding variants to each type of chair and desk. By adding variants, you can run reports such as Item Availability by Variant to identify differences between the blue chairs versus the green chairs, for example.

Register New Items
Set Up General Inventory Information
Walkthrough: Variants

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