7.2.2. Using product variants

Product variants are used to manage products having different variations, like size, color, etc. It allows managing the product at the template level (for all variations) and at the variant level (specific attributes).

As an example, a company selling T-Shirts may have the following product:

KIU T-Shirt:
Size: S, M, L, XL
Color: Black, Red, White

In this example, KIU T-Shirt is called the product template and KIU T-Shirt, S, Red is a variant. Sizes and color are attributes.

The above example has a total of 12 different products (4 sizes x 3 colors). Each one of these products has its own inventory, sales, etc.

→ Impact of variants

Barcode: the code and barcode is associated to a variant, not the template. Every variant may have its own barcode.
Price: every product variant has its own public price that is computed based on the template price (VND 100,000) with an optional extra for every variant (+VND 20,000 for color red). However, you can define pricelist rules that apply on the template or the variant.
Inventory: the inventory is managed by product variant. You don’t own t-shirts, you only own “T-shirts, S, Red”, or “T-Shirts, M, Black”. For information purpose, on the product template form, you get the inventory that is the sum of every variant.
Picture: the picture is related to the variant, every variation of a product may have its own primary picture.
Other fields: most of the other fields belongs to the product template. If you update them, it updates automatically all the variants. (example: Income Account, Taxes)

→ When should you use variants?

Using variants has the following impacts:

eCommerce: in your online shop, the customer will only see product templates in the catalog page. Once the visitor click on such a product, he will have options to choose amongst the variants (colors, sizes, …)
Manufacturing: Using variants allows to define only one bill of material for a product template and slight variations for some of the variants. Example: instead of creating a Bill of Material for “T-shirt, Red, S”, you create a bill of material for “T-shirt” and add some lines that are specific to the dimension S, and other lines specific to the color Red.
Pricing: The default price of a product is computed using the price of the product template and add the optional extra price on each dimension of the variant. This way, variant prices are easier to maintain since you don’t have to set the price for every variant. However, it’s possible to create pricelist rules to fix price per variants too.

→ When should you avoid using variants?

Using variants may add a level of complexity on the way you use Kiu ERP . You should consider using variants only if you need it to reduce the complexity of managing lots of products that are similar.

As an example, importing your initial product catalog is more complex if you use variants. You can’t just import a list of products, you must import product templates and all their related variations.

In addition to that, you should also carefully select the dimensions that you manage as separate product templates and those as variants. As an example, a company having these products:

Quality: T-Shirts, Polos, Shirts
Color: Red, Black, White
Size: S, M, L, XL

In such a use case, you could create 1 template with three dimensions of variants ( T-Shirts, Polos, Shirts). But, it’s recommended to create two different product templates as T-shirts may highly differ from polos or shirts and customer expect to see these as two different products in the e-Commerce:

Product Template: T-shirt
- Color: Red, Black, White
- Size: S, M, L, XL
Product Template: Polos
- Color: Red, Black, White
- Size: S, M, L, XL

→ Configuration:

Activate the variant feature: Before you can use product variants, you must first activate the product variants in the settings. To do so, you must go to the Sales app. In the menu Configuration ‣ Settings, locate the Products Variants line, and tick the option Products can have several attributes, then click on Apply
Create product with variant: Once you have activated the variant option, you can add variants to your products. To do so, go to the Sales module, Sales ‣ Products. It is also accessible from the Purchase and inventory modules.

Now, click on the product you wish to add variants to.

In the product page, a new tab called Variants has appeared. The number written on top is the number of variants this product currently has. To add new variants, click on the tile. In the new window, click on
In Attributes, click on the roll down menu and select the type of variance you wish to add. If the variant does not yet exist, you can create it on the fly by clicking on Create and edit…

In the Attributes window, the Value field is the description of the attribute such as Black, White or Red . The Attribute field is the type of variant such as Color.

You can add a cost for the variant on the fly by adding it in the Attribute Price Extra field, or choose to modify it later. Click on Save.

You can also add a different barcode and internal reference to the variant.

When you have entered all the specifications of the variant, click on Save.

→ Managing product variants:

Managing combination possibilities: By default, with the above product (KIU T-shirt) template, you get 12 different products (3 colors, 4 sizes). If the XL size only exists for red and black t-shirts, you can deactivate the white product variant.

To do this, click on the Variants button, select the XL, White T-shirt. From the product form, uncheck the Activebox of the T-shirt White, XL

Setting a price per variant: You can add a cost over the main price for some of the variants of a product. Once you have activated the variant option, you can add variants to your products. To do so, go to the Sales module, open Sales ‣ Products and click on the product you want to modify. Click on the Variant Prices button to access the list of variant values.

Click on the variant name you wish to add a value to, to make the 3 fields editable. In the Attribute Price Extra field, add the cost of the variant that will be added to the original price.
When you have entered all the extra values, click on Save.

7.2.1. How to use different units of measure?

In some cases, handling products in different unit of measures (UoM) is necessary. For example, if you buy products in a country where the metric system is of module and sell the in a country where the imperial system is used, you will need to convert the units.

You can set up KIU BMP to work with different units of measure for one product.

Note: For each product, you only can set multi-UoM which belong to one UoM category, you can’t set different UoM of different UoM categories.

Configuration: In the Inventory Module, go to Configuration ‣ Settings. In the Products section, select “Some products may be sold/purchased in different units of measure (advanced)”, then click on Apply

Set up units on your product: In Inventory Control ‣ Products, open the product which you would like to change the purchase/sale unit of measure, and click on Edit.
In the Unit of Measure section, select the unit in which the product will be sold and in which internal transfers will be done.
In the Purchase Unit of Measure section, select the unit in which you purchase the product. When you’re done, click on Save.

Transfer from one unit to another: When doing inter-unit transfers, the rounding is automatically done by KIU BMP. The unit of measure can be changed throughout the whole process. The only condition is that the unit of measure is part of the same category.

In this example, we are in the beverage merchandise business (Please see image attached above)

Purchase: When doing your purchase order, you can still change the unit of measure

Receiving: The quantity control is managed by “Unit” . Therefore, the quantity check is done by unit

Sales: The liquor are sold by pack of 4 bottles as per customer’s requirement. You can choose the unit of measure on the sale order document. When doing it, the price is automatically computed from the unit to pack

In the delivery order, the initial demand is done in the sales order unit of measure:

But the transfer is done in the product unit of measure. Everything is converted automatically:

3.5.6. How to manage prices for B2B (tax excluded) and B2C (tax included)?

When working with consumers, prices are usually expressed with taxes included in the price (e.g., in most eCommerce). But, when you work in a B2B environment, companies usually negotiate prices with taxes excluded.

KIU BMP manages both use cases easily, as long as you register your prices on the product with taxes excluded or included, but not both together. If you manage all your prices with tax included (or excluded) only, you can still easily do sales order with a price having taxes excluded (or included): that’s easy.

This documentation is only for the specific use case where you need to have two references for the price (tax included or excluded), for the same product. The reason of the complexity is that there is not a symmetrical relationship with prices included and prices excluded, as shown in this use case, in belgium with a tax of 21%:

Your eCommerce has a product at 10€ (taxes included)
This would do 8.26€ (taxes excluded) and a tax of 1.74€

But for the same use case, if you register the price without taxes on the product form (8.26€), you get a price with tax included at 9.99€, because:

8.26€ * 1.21 = 9.99€

So, depending on how you register your prices on the product form, you will have different results for the price including taxes and the price excluding taxes:

Taxes Excluded: 8.26€ & 10.00€
Taxes Included: 8.26€ & 9.99€

Note

If you buy 100 pieces at 10€ taxes included, it gets even more tricky. You will get: 1000€ (taxes included) = 826.45€ (price) + 173.55€ (taxes) Which is very different from a price per piece at 8.26€ tax excluded.

This documentation explains how to handle the very specific use case where you need to handle the two prices (tax excluded and included) on the product form within the same company.

Note

In terms of finance, you have no more revenues selling your product at 10€ instead of 9.99€ (for a 21% tax), because your revenue will be exactly the same at 9.99€, only the tax is 0.01€ higher. So, if you run an eCommerce in Belgium, make your customer a favor and set your price at 9.99€ instead of 10€. Please note that this does not apply to 20€ or 30€, or other tax rates, or a quantity >1. You will also make you a favor since you can manage everything tax excluded, which is less error prone and easier for your salespeople.

Configuration

Introduction

The best way to avoid this complexity is to choose only one way of managing your prices and stick to it: price without taxes or price with taxes included. Define which one is the default stored on the product form (on the default tax related to the product), and let KIU BMP compute the other one automatically, based on the pricelist and fiscal position. Negotiate your contracts with customers accordingly. This perfectly works out-of-the-box and you have no specific configuration to do.

If you can not do that and if you really negotiate some prices with tax excluded and, for other customers, others prices with tax included, you must:

always store the default price TAX EXCLUDED on the product form, and apply a tax (price included on the product form)
create a pricelist with prices in TAX INCLUDED, for specific customers
create a fiscal position that switches the tax excluded to a tax included
assign both the pricelist and the fiscal position to customers who want to benefit to this pricelist and fiscal position

For the purpose of this documentation, we will use the above use case:

your product default sale price is 8.26€ tax excluded
but we want to sell it at 10€, tax included, in our shops or eCommerce website

Setting your products

Your company must be configured with tax excluded by default. This is usually the default configuration, but you can check your Default Sale Tax from the menu Configuration ‣ Settings of the Accounting application.

Once done, you can create a B2C pricelist. You can activate the pricelist feature per customer from the menu: Configuration ‣ Settings of the Sale application. Choose the option different prices per customer segment.

Once done, create a B2C pricelist from the menu Configuration ‣ Pricelists. It’s also good to rename the default pricelist into B2B to avoid confusion.

Then, create a product at 8.26€, with a tax of 21% (defined as tax not included in price) and set a price on this product for B2C customers at 10€, from the Sales ‣ Products menu of the Sales application:

Setting the B2C fiscal position

From the accounting application, create a B2C fiscal position from this menu: Configuration ‣ Fiscal Positions. This fiscal position should map the VAT 21% (tax excluded of price) with a VAT 21% (tax included in price)

Test by creating a quotation

Create a quotation from the Sale application, using the Sales ‣ Quotations menu. You should have the following result: 8.26€ + 1.73€ = 9.99€.

Then, create a quotation but change the pricelist to B2C and the fiscal position to B2C on the quotation, before adding your product. You should have the expected result, which is a total price of 10€ for the customer: 8.26€ + 1.74€ = 10.00€.

This is the expected behavior for a customer of your shop.

Avoid changing every sale order

If you negotiate a contract with a customer, whether you negotiate tax included or tax excluded, you can set the pricelist and the fiscal position on the customer form so that it will be applied automatically at every sale of this customer.

The pricelist is in the Sales & Purchases tab of the customer form, and the fiscal position is in the accounting tab.

Note that this is error prone: if you set a fiscal position with tax included in prices but use a pricelist that is not included, you might have wrong prices calculated for you. That’s why we usually recommend companies to only work with one price reference.

3.5.5. How to set tax-included prices

In most countries, B2C prices are tax-included. To do that in KiuBMP, check Included in Price for each of your sales taxes in Accounting ‣ Configuration ‣ Accounting ‣ Taxes.

This way the price set on the product form includes the tax. As an example, let’s say you have a product with a sales tax of 10%. The sales price on the product form is $100.

If the tax is not included in the price, you will get:

- Price without tax: $100
- Taxes: $10
- Total to pay: $110

If the tax is included in the price:

- - Price without tax: 90.91
  - Taxes: $9.09
  - Total to pay: $100

You can rely on following documentation if you need both tax-included (B2C) and tax-excluded prices (B2B): How to manage prices for B2B (tax excluded) and B2C (tax included)?.

Show tax-included prices in eCommerce catalog

By default prices displayed in your eCommerce catalog are tax-excluded. To display it in tax-included, check Show line subtotals with taxes included (B2C) in Sales ‣ Configuration ‣ Settings (Tax Display).

3.5.4. How to adapt taxes to my customer status or localization

Most often sales tax rates depend on your customer status or localization. To map taxes, KIU BMP brings the so-called Fiscal Positions.

Create tax mapping

A fiscal position is just a set of rules that maps default taxes (as defined on product form) into other taxes. In the screenshot below, foreign customers get a 0% tax instead of the default 15%, for both sales and purchases.

The main fiscal positions are automatically created according to your localization. But you may have to create fiscal positions for specific use cases. To define fiscal positions, go to Invoicing/Accounting ‣ Configuration ‣ Fiscal Positions.

Note

If you use KIU BMP Accounting, you can also map the Income/Expense accounts according to the fiscal position. For example, in some countries, revenues from sales are not posted in the same account than revenues from sales in foreign countries.

Adapt taxes to your customer status

If a customer falls into a specific taxation rule, you need to apply a tax-mapping. To do so, create a fiscal position and assign it to your customers.

KIU BMP will use this specific fiscal position for any order/invoice recorded for the customer.

Note

If you set the fiscal position in the sales order or invoice manually, it will only apply to this document and not to future orders/invoices of the same customer.

Adapt taxes to your customer address (destination-based)

Depending on your localization, sales taxes may be origin-based or destination-based. Most states or countries require you to collect taxes at the rate of the destination (i.e. your buyer’s address) while some others require to collect them at the rate effective at the point of origin (i.e. your office or warehouse).

If you are under the destination-based rule, create one fiscal position per tax-mapping to apply.

Check the box Detect Automatically.
Select a country group, country, state or city to trigger the tax-mapping.

This way if no fiscal position is set on the customer, KIU BMP will choose the fiscal position matching the shipping address on creating an order.

Note

For eCommerce orders, the tax of the visitor’s cart will automatically update and apply the new tax after the visitor has logged in or filled in his shipping address.

Specific use cases

If, for some fiscal positions, you want to remove a tax, instead of replacing by another, just keep the Tax to Apply field empty.

If, for some fiscal positions, you want to replace a tax by two other taxes, just create two lines having the same Tax on Product.

Note

The fiscal positions are not applied on assets and deferred revenues.

3.5.3. How to set default taxes

Taxes applied in your country are installed automatically for most localizations.

Default taxes set in orders and invoices come from each product’s Invoicing tab. Such taxes are used when you sell to companies that are in the same country/state than you.

To change the default taxes set for any new product created go to Invoicing/Accounting ‣ Configuration ‣ Settings.

Tip

If you work in a multi-company environment, the sales and purchase taxes may have a different value according to the company you work for. You can login into two different companies and change this field for each company.

3.3.6. Add terms & conditions on orders

Specifying Terms and Conditions is essential to ensure a good relationship between customers and sellers. Every seller has to declare all the formal information which include products and company policy; allowing the customer to read all those terms everything before committing to anything.

KIU BMP lets you easily include your default terms and conditions on every quotation, sales order and invoice.

Set up your default terms and conditions

Go to SALES ‣ Configuration ‣ Settings and activate Default Terms & Conditions.

In that box you can add your default terms & conditions. They will then appear on every quotation, SO and invoice.

3.3.4. Stimulate customers with quotations deadline

As you send quotations, it is important to set a quotation deadline, both to entice your customer into action with the fear of missing out on an offer and to protect yourself. You don’t want to have to fulfill an order at a price that is no longer cost effective for you.

Set a deadline

On every Quotation or Sales order you can add an Validity (Expiry Date).

Use deadline in templates

You can also set a default deadline in a Quotation Template. Each time that template is used in a quotation, that deadline is applied.

On your customer side, they will see this:

3.5.2. How to sell in foreign currencies

Pricelists can also be used to manage prices in foreign currencies.

Check Allow multi currencies in Invoicing/Accounting ‣ Settings. As admin, you need Adviser access rights on Invoicing/Accounting apps.
Create one pricelist per currency. A new Currency field shows up in pricelist setup form.

Tip

To activate a new currency, go to Accounting ‣ Configuration ‣ Currencies, select it in the list and press Activate in the top-right corner. Now it will show up in currencies drop-down lists.

Prices in foreign currencies can be defined in two fashions.

Automatic conversion from public price

The public price is in your company’s main currency (see Accounting ‣ Settings) and is set in product detail form.

The conversion rates can be found in Accounting ‣ Configuration ‣ Currencies. They can be updated from Yahoo or the European Central Bank at your convenience: manually, daily, weekly, etc. See Accounting ‣ Settings.

With original pricelist

After choosing EUR pricelist

Set your own prices

This is advised if you don’t want your pricing to change along with currency rates.

3.5.1. How to import Products with Categories and Variants

Import templates are provided in the Import Tool of the most common data to import (contacts, products, bank statements, etc.). You can open them with any spreadsheet software (Microsoft Office, OpenOffice, Google Drive, etc.).

How to customize the file

Remove columns you don’t need. However, we advise you to not remove the ID column (see why below).
Set a unique ID to every single record by dragging down the ID sequencing.
Don’t change the labels of columns you want to import. Otherwise, KIU BMP won’t recognize them anymore, and you will have to map them on your own in the import screen.
Feel free to add new columns, but the fields need to exist in KIU BMP. If KIU BMP fails in matching the column name with a field, you can match it manually when importing by browsing a list of available fields.

Why an “ID” column?

The ID is a truly unique identifier for the line item. Feel free to use one of your previous software to ease the transition into KIU BMP.

Setting an ID is not mandatory when importing, but it helps in many cases:

Update imports: you can import the same file several times without creating duplicates.
Import relation fields (see here below).

How to import relation fields

An KIU BMP object is always related to many other objects (e.g., a product is linked to product categories, attributes, vendors, etc.). To import those relations, you need to import the records of the related object first from their own list menu.

You can do this using the name of the related record or its ID. The ID is expected when two records have the same name. In such a case, add ” / ID” at the end of the column title (e.g., for product attributes: Product Attributes / Attribute / ID).