PRODUCT DEFINITION OVERVIEW

Costpoint Product Definition contains the product configuration screens and functions that are used in Costpoint Purchasing, Inventory, and Procurement Planning. Costpoint Product Definition is an add-on product used in conjunction with Costpoint Purchasing and/or Inventory.

You can use the Part Master, Services, and Goods tables to define the characteristics of an item (part, good, or service). You can also use the Provisional Parts menu to create and maintain provisional part information for planning purposes in other Costpoint functions.  You can also establish provisional part data in Costpoint Materials Estimating.

Control tables and screens are available in which commodity codes, product types, product classifications, units of measure and conversion, standard text, part preference types, and manufacturers can be maintained. The Part Master contains descriptive information, material planning data and project data about a part, and information for alternate and substitute parts.

You can also maintain item-specific information including standard text, vendors, item cost, and item cost for projects in this module.

Multicompany And Multicurrency Logic

Costpoint Product Definition's multicompany and multicurrency logic enables you to link specific items (i.e., parts goods and/or services) to a company in Costpoint.  If you select the Separate Items By Company checkbox (ITEM_SETTINGS_CORP. ITEMS_BY_COMP_FL) in the Product Definition Corporate Settings subtask of the Product Definition Settings screen, newly added items will automatically be linked to the company of the user entering the items in Costpoint. Users that are logged in to other companies will not be able to use these items. It is possible to have two item records with the same ID (and revision, if the Allow Multiple Revisions for Each Item checkbox is also selected in Product Definition Corporate Settings subtask) in the database, as long as they are linked to different companies.

If you do not select the Separate Items by Company checkbox, all items in the database will be available to users in all companies; therefore, two items cannot have the same item ID (or item ID/revision, if you selected the Allow Multiple Revisions checkbox). In this case, the ITEM table will be treated as a corporate table, and "1" will be the new default company (COMPANY_ID) for all new items.

The Costpoint Product Definition Settings application consists of two screens. The main screen (ITEM_SETTINGS table) contains all the company settings for the company ID in which the user is logged. The subtask, Product Definition Corporate Settings (ITEM_SETTINGS_CORP table), contains all corporate-wide settings. You can view these settings, but you can modify them only if your user ID is linked to the assigned company.  

The Commodity and User-Defined Labels tables will also be separated by company if you select the Separate Items by Company checkbox.  In this case, only commodity codes or labels linked to the same company as the item can be assigned to that item. If you do not select the Separate Items by Company checkbox, commodity and user-defined labels will be considered corporate tables, and "1" will be the default ID for new companies.

Standard Text is a always company table. Users can create, modify, and assign only those standard text codes that are linked to their company ID. Documents and their associated setup tables are created in Costpoint Bills of Material.

Units of Measure, Manufacturers, Product Types/Classifications, Part Preference Types, Price Catalogs and Industry Classifications are corporate tables, and the data for these tables is available to users in all companies. 

The company ID is added to the Item Cost (ITEM_CST) table as a primary key so that items can be used across multiple companies (i.e., the Separate Items by Company checkbox is not selected), and each company can have a different cost (and currency) associated with the item.  Users can view and/or modify item costs only for their company. However, since a project can belong to only one company, the company ID is not added to the Project Item Cost table. Users can view only the projects linked to their company.

Sales Abbreviations are tied to specific companies. Users can see only those sales abbreviations linked to their company ID.