Register New Items

Items, among other products, are the basis of your business, the goods or services that you trade in. Each item must be registered as an item card.

Item cards hold the information that is required to buy, store, sell, deliver, and account for items.

The item card can be of type Inventory, Service, or Non-Inventory to specify if the item is a physical inventory unit, a labor time unit, or a physical unit that is not tracked in inventory. For more information, see About Item Types.

An item can be structured as a parent item with underlying child items in a bill of materials (BOM). In Business Central, a bill of material can be either an assembly BOM or a production BOM, depending on its use. For more information, see Work with Bills of Material.

If you purchase the same item from more than one vendor, you can connect those vendors to the item card. The vendors will then appear on the Item Vendor Catalog page, so that you can easily select an alternate vendor.

Items that you offer to your customers but you do not want manage in your system until you start selling them can be set up as catalog items. Catalog items are not to be mistaken with regular items of type Non-Inventory. For more information, see Work with Catalog Items.

[!NOTE]
If item templates exist for different item types, then a page appears when you create a new item card from where you can select an appropriate template. If only one item template exists, then new item cards always use that template.

The following procedure explains how to create an item card from scratch. You can also create new item cards by copying existing ones. For more information, see Copy Existing Items to Create New Items.

[!Video https://www.microsoft.com/videoplayer/embed/RE47eLx?rel=0]

To create a new item card

--- author: jill-kotel-andersson

ms.topic: include ms.date: 09/24/2021 ms.author: edupont

Choose the icon, enter Items, and then choose the related link.
On the Items page, choose the New action.

If only one item template exists, then a new item card opens with some fields filled with information from the template.
On the Select a template for a new item page, choose the template that you want to use for the new item card.
Choose the OK button. A new item card opens with some fields filled with information from the template.
Proceed to fill or change fields on the item card as necessary. [!INCLUDEtooltip-inline-tip]

[!NOTE] In the Costing Method field, you set up how the item's unit cost is calculated by making assumptions about the flow of physical items through your company. Five costing methods are available, depending on the type of item. For more information, see Design Details: Costing Methods.

If you select Average, then the item's unit cost is calculated as the average unit cost at each point in time after a purchase. Inventory is valuated with the assumption that all inventories are sold simultaneously. With this setting, you can choose the Unit Cost field to view, on the Average Cost Calc. Overview page, the history of transactions that the average cost is calculated from.

You can view or edit special prices or discounts that you grant, or that your vendor grants you, for the item if certain criteria are met, such as customer, minimum order quantity, or ending date. You do this by choosing the Set Special Prices or Set Special Discounts actions. Each row on, for example, the Sales Prices page represents a special price. Each column represents a criterion that must apply to grant a customer the special price that you enter in the Unit Price field on the Sales Prices page. For more information, see Record Sales Price, Discount, and Payment Agreements or Record Special Purchase Prices and Discounts.

The item is now registered, and the item card is ready to be used on purchase and sales documents.

If you want to use this item card as a template when you create new item cards, you can save it as a template. For more information, see the following section.

To save the item card as a template

On the Item Card page, choose the Save as Template action. The Item Template page opens showing the item card as a template.
Fill in the fields as necessary. Hover over a field to read a short description.
To reuse dimensions in templates, choose the Dimensions action. The Dimension Templates page opens showing any dimension codes that are set up for the item.
Edit or enter dimension codes that will apply to new item cards created by using the template.
When you have completed the new item template, choose the OK button.

The item template is added to the list of item templates, so that you can use it to create new item cards.

Items used in production orders

If you want to register items that are then used in production orders, you specify the replenishment system as Prod. order on the Replenishment FastTab. For more information, see About Production Orders.

To set up multiple vendors for an item

If you purchase the same item from more than one vendor, you must enter information about each vendor of the item, such as prices, lead time, discounts, and so on.

Choose the icon, enter Items, and then choose the related link.
Select the relevant item, and then choose the Edit action.
Choose the Vendors action.
Choose the Vendor No. field, and then select the vendor that you want to set up for the item.
Optionally, fill in the remaining fields.
Repeat steps 2 through 5 for each vendor that you want to buy the item from.

The vendors will now appear on the Item Vendor Catalog page, which you open from the item card, so that you can easily select an alternate vendor.

Set up item substitutions

You can set up items to have substitutes, such as other items that can be used in place of the original item.

To make an item substitution

Choose the icon, enter Items, and then choose the related link.
Find the relevant item, and then click on the Item No. to open the Item Card.
Choose the Related action, then choose Item, and then Substitutions to open the the Item Substitution Entry page.
Choose the Substitute No. field, and then select the replacement item from the list.
Proceed to fill in or change other fields on the page as necessary.

When the quantity requested, such as on a sales line, exceeds the quantity that is available in inventory, then a message appears to inform you that substitute items exist.

[!NOTE]
Be aware that item substitutions will not automatically cause an item to be replaced by another item, for example when creating a sales order or in a BOM. Instead, you will be alerted to the fact that a substitution is available to you.

Categories, attributes, and variants

--- author: edupont04

ms.topic: include ms.date: 04/01/2021 ms.author: edupont

Categories and attributes are two different ways of grouping inventory items. Item variant is a way to indicate that a specific item is available in different colors or sizes, for example. Depending on how you set up your inventory, you can use categories to group chairs versus desks, and then use attributes to group green items versus blue items, for example. You can then supplement this setup by adding variants to each type of chair and desk. By adding variants, you can run reports such as Item Availability by Variant to identify differences between the blue chairs versus the green chairs, for example.

Deleting item cards

If you have posted a transaction for an item, you cannot delete the card because the ledger entries may be needed for inventory valuation or auditing. To delete item cards with ledger entries, contact to Microsoft partner to do so through code.

Manage inventory in warehouses

When you register a new item, you will see fields that are related to warehouse management, especially on the Warehouse FastTab. If your organization does not use the warehouse management capabilities in Business Central, then you can ignore those fields.

If your organization later sets up warehouse management, in most cases, you must then go back to each existing item to make sure that it has the right information in the various fields, so that the warehouse processes can run as expected. This information can includes fields such as Warehouse Class Code or Put-away Template Code. For more information, see Design Details: Warehouse Setup.

Planning

When your company uses the supply planning processes in Business Central, you must fill in the relevant fields on the Planning FastTab. For an introduction to the planning area, see Design Details: Central Concepts of the Planning System.

For examples of how you can use the fields on the Planning FastTab, see Setup Best Practices: Planning Parameters.

ms.topic: include ms.date: 12/20/2021 ms.author: edupont

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