# Products and Product Access
This section will guide you through the core principles on how products and sales groups within Procurement are structured, how they can be created, how they can be accessed and how access to them is managed.
# Object Graph
┌ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ┐
Sales Group Access
┌ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ │ │
┌ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ Sales Groups │ ┌─────────────────────┐
Products │ │ │ │ Zaikio/Organization │ │
│ ┌───────────────────┐ │ │ (Consumer) │
┌──────────────────┐ │ │ │Zaikio/Organization│ │ └─────────────────────┘ │
│ │ Articles │ │ (Supplier) │◀──┼──┐ ▲
└──────────────────┘ │ │ └───────────────────┘ │ │ │ │
│ ▲ ▲ │ │ ┌─────────────────────┐
│ │ │ │ └──┼───│ Contracts │ │
│ ┌───────────────────┐ ┌───────────────────┐ │ └─────────────────────┘
│ Variants │ │ │ │ SalesGroups │◀─────┐ │ ▲ │
│ └───────────────────┘ └───────────────────┘ │ │ │
▲ │ │ ▲ │ │ │ │
│ │ │ │ │ ┌─────────────────────┐
┌───────────────────┐ │ │ ┌───────────────────┐ │ │ │ SalesGroup │ │
│ │ SKUs │◀───────────│ Prices │ │ └──────│ Memberships │
└───────────────────┘ │ │ └───────────────────┘ │ └─────────────────────┘ │
└ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ┘ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─
# General Concepts - Products
Within Procurement a distinct product is made up out of three different entities: Article, Variant and SKU:
Articles define the frame for the Product like the name and a description.
Articles come in different Variants. A variant specifies product specific criteria such as sizes, weights, colouring and many more.
SKUs are, as the name suggests, the packaging units for a product. They define the packaging amounts and units as well as the sizing of the distinct package unit. A final item that can be ordered will always be a SKU
Relations between those entities are one-to-many: One Article can have many Variants, one Variant can have many SKUs.
Example: There might be a substrate article with the name Magno Satin. It comes in various Variants, one of them might be the 120 grammage variant. When you want to order these it might come as a SKU of 28.000 sheet on a pallet.
# Product Types
Procurement uses distinct product types for each product category. These will define the available data fields for Articles and Variants. You will not be able to create or ask for a base Article or Variant, you will always create or access specific product types, e.g. SubstrateArticle and SubstrateVariant for substrate.
Read more about the available types (opens new window) and their available fields
# General Concept - Sales Groups
Within Procurement a SalesGroup is a logical entity that is comparable to a classic product catalog or pricing agreement. It can have many Prices and can be assigned to one or many consumers.
Prices define the price of a given SKU which is valid for all members of a specific sales group. Every SKU can have many prices – even for the same sales group.
It is up to the supplier how to group consumers into sales groups. You might want to have just a single global sales group for all your customers. Or you might want to separate customers into sales groups depending on their location or by their sales representive. Or you want have special prices only visible for high valume customers.
Furthermore it is important to notice that customers can be in multiple sales groups at the same time. They might be in the default sales group, in the sames group for high volumne customer and the might have a sales group on their own for prices negotiated just between the supplier and this specific customer.
Suppliers might decide that some or all of their sales groups are exclusive. A sales group is exclusive when an order can only include articles with prices from one sales group at a time. And when you cannot have orders with articles with prices from different sales groups in one order.
# General Concept - Sales Group Access
Within Procurement access to a sales groups can be granted via SalesGroupMembership, which itself links to a SalesGroup and a Contract.
Consumers will only be able to browse articles and see prices when there is a connection via a a sales group and a sales group membership to their contract. When there are multiple connections then the consumer will see the cheapest available prices for each SKU.