Product Publishing

Overview:

The Product Publishing screen is designed for a manager to configure a product before it can be used by the Flywheel system. This allows the Coop to set appropriate Categorization and Pricing information which correspond to better Forecasts and easier transfer back to the ERP. 

The Publishing screen allows you to edit five main attributes. We will discuss each one below. 

There is also a helpful Calculator which allows the user to verify the units, prices, and conversions and provides a snippet of the view that Cropplan users will experience. 

Accessing the Product Publish Screen:

The screen can be accessed by opening a Product's Detail View, and then selecting "Publish" from the Action Menu:

It may be helpful to configure a Report or List View Filter which displays Products with a status of "Draft" - these are products which must be configured before they can be used in Flywheel

Editable Attributes:

Price:

If the Product has multiple Price Tiers, they will be displayed here. 

You may select one of these prices to act as the 'default' for the Product. This default will be applied until/unless a User overrides it by selecting a different price level. 

Price-by Unit:

This is is the most important attribute of a Product. You must select a unit which corresponds with the Price Levels which have come from the ERP. 

For example, a fertilizer might have a price level of $0.298. Our system needs to know if it's 29 cents per pound, or ton, or hundredweight, etc. Obviously, in this case, the unit will be pound. 

The Price-by Unit cannot be changed once the product is Published. If this is necessary, it will require developer support. 

The system will communicate with the ERP using the Price-by Unit. 

Your Users do not have to interact with the product using it's Price-by Unit if it is not convienent. The next attribute, Sell-by Unit can simplify their experience. 

Sell-by Unit:

The Sell-by Unit is the unit that the system displays by default.

Building on the previous example, even if the product is priced by the pound, it may be that folks usually interact with it in Tons. In this case, we could set the Sell-by Unit to Tons and this is what the system will display by default. 

The Sell-by Unit will always be convertible to/from the Price-by Unit. So even if a screen shows 2 tons - our system knows that that is equivalent to 4,000 pounds.

Product Category:

It may be helpful to create Product Categories (Sales Categories) that are different from what are in your ERP. Flywheel facilitates this through Product Categories.
The ERP's category is reflected in the Accounting Category, but you may change the Product Category based on your needs. 

Status:

A Product may have a Flywheel Status that is independent of the ERP Status. 

Available Flywheel Statuses are:

• Draft: This is a new Product which has not been Published yet
• Active: This Product has been Published and is available on Cropplans, etc
• Inactive: This Product was previously Published, but has been inactivated and is not available to be added to new or existing plans.

A product which is Inactive in the ERP will automatically be inactivated in Flywheel. 

A product could be Inactive in Flywheel while still Active in the ERP - this could be done, for example, if a Product is temporarily out of stock, etc.