A ‘Material’ can be allocated to a Product to ‘tag’ it for reporting purposes. Material codes may be used in Inventory and Sales reporting to group products together. It is available as a user “filter” on almost all Product reports in the system. Take a look at the Sales Analysis Schematic for a good visual representation of where Product Materials sit in the overall hierarchy. Note that Materials can cut across Product Divisions, Categories, Groups and Models when used in reporting.
Example
The original concept behind the ‘Material’ tag was to provide a mechanism to allow products made from a particular base material to be recorded as such for use in report selection. For instance, metal products could be allocated material tags covering steel, aluminium, copper, iron etc. Likewise Paint products could be tagged as being water based vs acrylic vs enamel. Timber products might have a material breakup of cedar, pine, oak, bamboo etc. Another example is cloth/fabric or carpet products which could be tagged as cotton, wool, polyester etc.
These are just examples. You can use this for any purpose you see fit. In fact we have seen clients apply several uses within the same Material list where the use relates to different Products. That is because a Product can only be allocated to one Material at any point in time.
Minimum Requirements
The use of product Materials is optional so you do not need to set any up..
Changing Established Data
Add new product materials and change products assigned to materials at any time.
Panel Options
- Standard panel features
- Maintenance
- Views
- Audit – lists an audit of data changes made over time to the product material currently being viewed
- Where Used – lists products currently assigned to the product material being viewed
- This Month’s Sales – shows sales for the current month for the product material being viewed
- Reports
- List Product Materials