Specify alternative products for sale or production
Alternative products are interchangeable, very similar, or comparable products that can be substituted during a sale or during production if the original product is out of stock.
Prerequisites
Create products and services (required)
Introduction to the sales module (required for sales)
Getting started with Advanced Manufacturing module (required for production)
You will need the Inventory: Products and families permission in order to access and edit the alternative products page.
Specify alternative products for a product
Alternative products, which can be substituted for the original product during a sale or during product, are specified from a product's record.
Select Inventory from the main menu, then Products.
Open a product.
Go to the Alternative products tab.
Click + Add to add an alternative product.
Select another product from your inventory from the dropdown menu.
Specify if the product is Interchangeable. Interchangeable means the original product can be substituted by the alternative product AND the alternative product can be substituted by the main product. Leaving this unchecked means that the alternative product cannot be substituted by the main product.
Set the Matching %. This is value which sets which alternative products will be prioritized for substitution. A higher number means the product will be prioritized when substitution is required for a sale or production order.
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Set if the alternative product can be Used in production and the Quantityof alternative product that is required to represent the original product.
If Used in production is checked, the alternative product will be selected without user confirmation when a production order is automatically released. Manually released production orders will ask for user confirmation before proceeding.
Save your changes.
Substitute an alternative product during a sale
When you process a sale order for a product which is currently out of stock, you can suggest alternative products to the customer.
During the Order stage, hover over the product name in the sale order to display a tooltip.
Click Select alternative products. This will open a window to display alternative products. The alternative products in the grid are sorted based on the Matching %specified for alternative products, showing the alternative product's name, location, price, and stock availability.
ClickUseto substitute the product in the sale order. If the window is closed without selecting an alternative product, the sale order is not changed.
Substitute an alternative product during production
Alternative products are substituted for out of stock (unavailable in shopfloor location and warehouse connected via logistics path) products upon production order Release. This is an Advanced Manufacturing feature.
If Use in production is checked for an alternative product is checked, the product with the highest available Matching % is selected automatically. If there are more than one alternative products available with the same matching percentage, Cin7 Core will pick alphabetically. Manually released production orders will act for confirmation before proceeding, automatically released production orders will not ask for confirmation before selecting an alternative product.