Very often, common products may be sold in several different “standard” configurations. For example, a “4×8 MDO Construction Sign” and a “4×8 ReMax Sign” may both be forms of a general MDO product. But currently there may be only one general product, “MDO Signs”. This means the specific information for each of these types has to be entered each time an order is placed.
To work around these and many other cases, users will often clone the product to create multiple products with differing names, uses. While that approach works, it creates a maintenance challenge in that multiple products must now be maintained for pricing, parts, formulas, etc. To decrease this maintenance and set up burden, there is a new feature in Control, the Derived Product.
A derived product represents the overridden configuration of a standard product. So, in the earlier example a single “MDO Sign” product could be added, and derived products are created for the “4×8 MDO Construction Sign” and “4×8 ReMax Sign”. These derived products would store the changes to the variables necessary for each derivation, but the pricing and costing calculation would all come from the MDO Sign product. For example, both derivations would store that the height was overridden to 48”, and the width to 96”. Additional variable information like the printer, colors, descriptions, can also be stored as applicable. The “MDO Sign” product is referred to as the base product for each of the derived products.