Product and Price Management

Overview

• What you’ll learn: How to configure products, define pricing structures, create price lists, and manage your complete product catalog in iDempiere.
• Prerequisites: Lesson 1 (Introduction to iDempiere), Lesson 3 (Navigating the Interface), Lesson 7 (Chart of Accounts Setup)
• Estimated reading time: 20 minutes

Introduction

Every business that sells goods or services needs a well-organized product catalog. In iDempiere, the product management system is both comprehensive and flexible, allowing you to handle everything from simple inventory items to complex service offerings with attribute-based variants. Understanding how products, pricing, and related configurations work together is essential before you begin entering sales orders or purchase orders.

This lesson walks you through the core tables and concepts behind product and price management. By the end, you will know how to create products, organize them into categories, define units of measure, set up price lists, and configure pricing rules that drive your sales and purchasing processes.

Understanding Products in iDempiere

The M_Product Table

At the heart of product management is the M_Product table. Every product or service your organization deals with — whether you sell it, buy it, or use it internally — is represented as a record in this table. Each product has a unique Search Key (also called the Value field), a descriptive name, and a product type that determines how iDempiere handles it throughout the system.

The Search Key is critically important in day-to-day operations. When users enter orders or invoices, they typically type the Search Key to quickly locate a product. Choose a logical, consistent naming convention for your Search Keys — for example, a prefix indicating the product category followed by a sequential number (e.g., HW-001 for hardware item 001, SVC-010 for service 010).

Product Types

iDempiere supports several product types, each with distinct behaviors:

• Item (I): A physical, tangible product that is stocked in inventory. Items affect warehouse quantities when shipped or received. Examples include raw materials, finished goods, and spare parts. When you complete a material receipt or shipment for an Item, iDempiere updates the on-hand quantity in the M_StorageOnHand table.
• Service (S): An intangible offering that is not tracked in inventory. Services are commonly used for consulting hours, maintenance contracts, or professional fees. They appear on invoices and orders but do not generate inventory transactions.
• Resource (R): Represents a capacity-based asset such as a machine, meeting room, or vehicle. Resources are tied to the Resource Management functionality and can be scheduled and allocated. They connect to the S_Resource table for availability tracking.
• Expense Type (E): Used for expense reporting. These products represent categories of expenses that employees might incur, such as travel, meals, or office supplies. They integrate with the Expense Report window.

Choosing the correct product type at creation time is important because it determines which downstream processes apply. You cannot stock a Service in a warehouse, and you cannot schedule an Item as a resource.

The Bill of Materials (BOM) Flag

Products can be flagged as a Bill of Materials (BOM). When the BOM checkbox is enabled, the product is treated as an assembly composed of component products. The BOM definition specifies which sub-products (and their quantities) make up the parent product. This is fundamental for manufacturing processes, but even in distribution scenarios, BOMs are useful for defining kits or bundles that are sold as a single unit but fulfilled from multiple inventory items.

Organizing Products

Product Categories (M_Product_Category)

Product categories provide a hierarchical way to organize your products. Every product must belong to exactly one product category. Categories serve multiple purposes:

• Organization: Group similar products together for easier navigation and reporting.
• Default Accounting: Each product category defines default accounting parameters (revenue account, COGS account, asset account, etc.) that are inherited by all products within that category. This dramatically simplifies setup — instead of configuring accounting for each product individually, you configure it once at the category level.
• Costing: Costing methods (Standard, Average, FIFO, LIFO, Last Invoice) can be defined at the product category level.

Design your category structure thoughtfully. Common approaches include categorizing by product line, by department, or by accounting treatment. For example, you might have categories like “Finished Goods,” “Raw Materials,” “Services — Professional,” and “Services — Support.”

Units of Measure (C_UOM and C_UOM_Conversion)

The Unit of Measure (UOM) defines how a product is counted, sold, and purchased. The C_UOM table stores all available units — pieces, kilograms, liters, hours, boxes, and so on. iDempiere ships with a standard set of UOMs following ISO standards.

Each product has a stocking UOM — the base unit in which inventory is tracked. However, you may buy or sell in different units. For instance, you might stock individual cans of paint but purchase them by the case (12 cans per case). The C_UOM_Conversion table handles these conversions, defining multiplication factors between units. Conversions can be set globally (applying to all products) or specifically for individual products.

When entering a purchase order in cases, iDempiere automatically converts the quantity to the stocking UOM for inventory purposes, using the conversion factor you defined. Getting your UOM conversions right from the start prevents inventory discrepancies down the road.

Product Attributes and Attribute Sets

For businesses that need to track product variants — such as size, color, lot number, or serial number — iDempiere provides a powerful attribute system built on two key tables:

• M_Attribute: Defines an individual attribute (e.g., “Color” with values Red, Blue, Green; or “Size” with values S, M, L, XL). Attributes can be of type List (predefined values) or free-form text/number.
• M_AttributeSet: Groups multiple attributes together into a set that can be assigned to a product. For example, a “T-Shirt Attributes” set might include both Color and Size. Attribute sets also control whether lot numbers and serial numbers are tracked, and whether attributes are captured at the instance level (per physical unit) or at the product level.

Instance attributes are particularly important for traceability. When you assign an attribute set with instance attributes to a product, every inventory transaction requires the user to specify the attribute values (e.g., the lot number of the goods being received). This enables full lot tracking and serial number tracking throughout the supply chain.

Price Lists and Pricing

Price List Structure

Pricing in iDempiere follows a structured hierarchy that provides both flexibility and control:

1. Price List (M_PriceList): The top-level container. A price list has a name, a currency, and a flag indicating whether it is a Sales price list or a Purchase price list. You might have “US Retail Price List (USD),” “Wholesale Price List (USD),” and “European Price List (EUR).” Each price list also specifies whether prices include tax — a critical setting for regions where tax-inclusive pricing is the norm.
2. Price List Version (M_PriceList_Version): Each price list contains one or more versions, each with a Valid From date. This allows you to prepare future pricing changes in advance. When a sales order is created, iDempiere selects the price list version whose Valid From date is the most recent one on or before the order date. This temporal versioning means you never lose historical pricing data.
3. Product Price (M_ProductPrice): Within each price list version, individual product prices are defined. Each product price record contains three price fields:
   • List Price: The published or catalog price, typically the highest price. Often used as the reference for calculating discounts.
   • Standard Price: The default selling (or buying) price used when creating order lines. This is the price that actually appears on transactions unless overridden.
   • Limit Price: The minimum acceptable price (floor price). If price limit enforcement is enabled, iDempiere will prevent users from entering a price below this value on sales orders, protecting margins.

Price Schemas and Discount Rules

Manually entering prices for every product in every price list version would be tedious for businesses with large catalogs. Price Schemas (also called Discount Schemas, stored in M_DiscountSchema) automate this process. A price schema defines rules for calculating prices, such as:

• Apply a percentage markup or discount to a base price list to generate a new price list.
• Round prices to friendly numbers (e.g., round to the nearest 0.99).
• Apply different discount percentages based on product category or specific product ranges.

For example, you might define a schema that takes your Standard Purchase Price List, adds a 40% markup, and rounds to the nearest dollar to produce your Retail Sales Price List. When you create a new price list version, you can select a base version and apply a discount schema, and iDempiere will calculate all the product prices automatically.

Discount schemas are also used at the Business Partner level to define customer-specific or vendor-specific discount structures. A Business Partner with a flat discount schema of 10% will automatically receive a 10% reduction from the list price on every order line.

Tax Categories

Each product is assigned a Tax Category (C_TaxCategory). The tax category works together with the Business Partner’s tax-related settings and the ship-to/ship-from locations to determine which tax rate applies to a transaction line. For example, a product in the “Standard Goods” tax category sold to a customer in a specific state will resolve to the appropriate sales tax rate based on the tax rules you have configured.

Common tax categories include “Standard,” “Reduced Rate,” “Zero-Rated,” and “Exempt.” The actual tax rate resolution involves the Tax Rate window (C_Tax), where rules are defined based on combinations of tax category, region, and business partner tax status.

Purchasing Information

Vendor-Product Relationships (C_BPartner_Product)

The C_BPartner_Product table links products to their vendors (suppliers). This relationship stores vendor-specific information such as:

• Vendor Product No: The supplier’s own part number or SKU for this product.
• Vendor Category: The supplier’s classification for the product.
• Minimum Order Quantity: The smallest quantity the vendor will accept for an order.
• Order Pack Quantity: The quantity increment in which the vendor sells (e.g., must order in multiples of 12).
• Current Vendor Flag: Indicates which vendor is the preferred or default supplier for this product when multiple vendors supply the same item.

This information is used by the purchasing process. When you create a purchase order, iDempiere can look up the vendor product number and display it on the PO. The Requisition-to-PO process also uses this data to automatically generate purchase orders to the correct vendors.

The Product Window: A Walkthrough

To create or manage products, navigate to Material Management → Material Management Rules → Product. The Product window contains several tabs:

1. Product Tab (Header): Enter the Search Key, Name, Description, Product Type, Product Category, UOM, Tax Category, and other basic fields. Set the BOM flag here if applicable. The “Stocked” checkbox determines whether the product maintains inventory levels.
2. Price Tab: Displays all price list entries for this product. You can view prices across all price lists and versions. New prices can be added here or via the Price List Version window.
3. Replenish Tab: Configure reorder levels, minimum/maximum quantities, and replenishment type for warehouse stocking automation.
4. Purchasing Tab: Manage the vendor-product relationships (C_BPartner_Product records) described above. Add multiple vendors and specify the current vendor.
5. Business Partner Tab: Shows customer-specific product information.
6. Substitute Tab: Define substitute products that can be offered when this product is unavailable.
7. Related Product Tab: Configure cross-sell and up-sell relationships.
8. Attribute Set Instance Tab: If the product uses attribute sets with instance attributes, this tab shows all known attribute set instances (e.g., all lot numbers ever received).

When creating a new product, the minimum required fields are: Search Key, Name, Product Type, Product Category, UOM, and Tax Category. After saving the header record, proceed to the Price tab to add the product to at least one price list so it can be used on orders and invoices.

Key Takeaways

• Products in iDempiere are classified by type — Item, Service, Resource, or Expense — and each type drives different system behavior regarding inventory, scheduling, and accounting.
• Product Categories provide default accounting and costing settings, reducing per-product configuration effort.
• Units of Measure and UOM Conversions ensure accurate inventory tracking even when buying and selling in different units.
• Attribute Sets enable lot tracking, serial number tracking, and product variant management (size, color, etc.).
• Price Lists use a three-tier structure (Price List → Version → Product Price) with three price levels (List, Standard, Limit) to support flexible and time-versioned pricing.
• Price Schemas automate price list generation through markup, discount, and rounding rules.
• Tax Categories work with tax rules to determine the correct tax rate for each transaction line.
• Vendor-Product relationships store supplier-specific part numbers, order quantities, and preferred vendor designations for purchasing automation.

What’s Next

Now that you understand how to set up products and pricing, Lesson 10 will teach you about Document Processing Basics — the lifecycle that every transactional document (orders, invoices, payments, shipments) follows in iDempiere. Understanding document statuses, actions, and sequences is essential before you begin creating actual business transactions.