Associated Products Simple Association

The Associated Products tab, located inside Catalog and Inventory Maintenance, allows commonly used product groupings, such as carpet and pad, to be linked together to ease and assist with Quote, Order, and Property Management Template building. B2B Products will download into your system “pre-associated;” however, manual associations can be added at any time using the process outlined below. There is also a “Mass Association” tool, which is covered in a separate article, that allows, for example, carpet padding and carpet labor to be associated across all carpet SKUs. Overall, Associated Products should greatly speed up Quote and Order Entry and Property Management Template building while at the same time increasing accuracy.

To begin this process, click on the Associated Products tab in the Edit Existing Catalog screen for an active style. That screen will appear as follows:



The Export Detail button was added for items checked as B.O.M Constructed Item. When clicked, this button will export all Associated Products and B.O.M. Items for the selected catalog item. Please Note: The Edit All Colors field must be unchecked in order to access the Add Association button above.

To add a simple association, click the Add Association button at the bottom left of the screen. The system will then prompt a Product Association box as follows:



Click the Select Item button to choose a product to associate with the main product (e.g., 3/8 TOPBOND carpet padding is being associated with style: BEACH HOUSE 12, color: EVENING SUN). The options in the white area above will determine how that association is handled when a linked product is added to a Quote or Order. If no options are selected after adding the main product to a Quote/Order, an Association Products Exist message will appear in the Add/Change Line Item screen, and a button to View Associations will also display. When clicked, the Add Associated Products screen prompts as follows:



If the Automatically Prompt Association in Quote/Order option has been selected in the Product Association screen for an item, the Associated Products Exists/View Associations message/button will prompt in the Add/Change Line Item screen. After the screen is closed, the Add Associated Products screen will appear, listing all items associated with the main item as follows:



If the Automatically Select in Quote/Order option was also selected, the Associated Products Exists/View Associations message/button, along with the Add Associated Products screen will prompt, and the item will be automatically selected (Y in the Select column) to be written as a line on the Quote/Order, with a Sale Quantity of 1 as follows:



Additionally, if the first two options described above have been selected and the Default Quantity in Quote/Order has also been selected, in addition to the scenario above, the Associated product’s Sale Quantity will be correlated to the main item’s Sale Quantity depending on how Qty per Sale UOM (Unit of Measure) or Exact Quantity has been established. For example, if we associate the carpet pad with 1.00 as Qty per Sale UOM, the system will automatically write the carpet line, as well as the pad line, with the same Sale Quantity amount as follows:



When the Add Associated Products screen (illustrated above) is displayed, the Quantity column can be edited during Quote/Order Entry by clicking in the field. Type in the applicable Sale Quantity amount and click Continue. All of the selected items and corresponding quantities will then be written into your order.

The final two setup options in the Product Association box appear as follows: Item is a Substitute, and Item is INACTIVE. If the Item is a Substitute option is selected, the system will flag the Sub column in the Add Associated Products screen, indicating that the item is a substitute for a main product when needed (e.g., LIGHT GOLD end cap may be a substitute for GOLD end cap). If the Item is INACTIVE option is selected, the system will render the association inactive so that it will no longer appear in the Add Associated Products screen.