What are Product Locations and Why are they Useful
Product Locations allow you to default the products presented in the Flexpricer interface only to those available in a particular location. Although designed to help businesses with warehouses that have different products and stock-levels associated with them, Product Locations can also be used if you simply want to present a certain set of products as the default for a particular opportunity. Product Locations make it easier for your sales reps to select the right products from the right location!
Consider the scenario…
- You sell certain products from your Paris warehouse and others from your London warehouse. And you have some products that are stocked in both warehouses.
- When a customer orders, you want your sales reps to default to selecting products from the warehouse nearest the customer
Product Locations is the right solution if you want Flexpricer to default the presentation of Products to those associated with a given location.
IMPORTANT NOTE – To provide flexibility to different business processes, Flexpricer does not PREVENT users from changing and selecting products from different locations. It simply defaults them to using an appropriate location. You may create your own validation rules and processes to enforce stricter controls if required.
How to Setup Product Locations
- Go to the Flexpricer Settings page
- Under Sector Solutions section, check the box to Enable Product Locations
- Update Product Page Layouts to display the Product Locations related list
- Update Pricebook Page Layouts to display the Pricebook Locations related list
- Update Opportunity Page Layouts to display the Default Location field.
- Create Location Records – these are locations that you would like to initial filter product records on – e.g. Paris, London
- Create Pricebook Location Records – these have a lookup to Pricebook and a lookup to Location. They create an association between a Pricebook and a Location – e.g. products in the UK Retail Pricebook may be associated with the London location but not the Paris location.
- Create Product Location Records – these have a lookup to Product and a lookup to Location. They create an association between a Product and a Location – e.g. each specific product may have a Product Location record to designate whether it is available in the Location
- Product Location records may optionally hold information about stock levels and this data may be presented in the Flexpricer interface in a future Flexpricer release.
How to Use Product Locations
Now, on any given opportunity, populate the Default Location lookup field with the Location that you wish to use to initially filter products.
When Flexpricer loads and Product Locations are enabled in Settings, it reads the Default Location field from the Opportunity.
If the Opportunity’s Pricebook has a Pricebook Location record linked to the same Location as the Opportunity, then it defaults to display only products that have a Product Location record linked to the same Location.
Sales Reps can manually opt to choose a different location or choose products from All Locations using the picklist next to the search icon. However, their initial default search when the Flexpricer interface loads is limited to products that have Product Location records associated with the same Location as the Opportunity’s Default Location.