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Many businesses sell products that come in multiple sizes, colors, materials, or configurations. A single product design can quickly expand into dozens or even hundreds of sellable combinations. Without structure, inventory becomes harder to track, purchasing gets fragmented, and reporting loses clarity.
Use item variants to manage all variations of a product under a single item record instead of creating separate items for each combination. You get consolidated reporting while still tracking inventory, pricing, and availability at the variant level - whether you sell three T-shirt sizes or two hundred fabric-color combinations.
Tip
To learn more about using variants in production, go to Walkthrough: Variants for the Contoso Coffee demo data.
Add variants to an item
It's easy enough to define variants for an item.
To add variants
- Open the Items List page, open the relevant item.
- On the Item card, choose the Related action, then choose Item, and then choose the Variants action.
- On the Item Variants page, list the variants.
Then, when you create a sales document and add the item, you can specify the variant of the item in the Variant Code field. The same applies to purchasing documents.
Add attributes to variants
You can assign attributes that are specific to a variant. Item variants inherit attributes from the item, and you can adjust or remove those inherited values when the variant requires different information.
You can open the Item Variant Attribute Values page from the Item Variants List or the Item Variant Card pages to review or edit variant-specific attributes. When you add a new variant of an item, the attributes defined for the item transfer to the variant. You can then update or delete the inherited values to ensure the variant shows the correct details.
There's also the Update Variant Attributes action on the Item Card page that lets you to force sync attributes from the item to its variants.
Add a picture to a variant
Adding pictures of item variants can reduce confusion when working with large assortments of similar variants. Tiles and tall tiles modes on the list can help you quickly identify each variant, which improves accuracy in the variant selection, manufacturing, fulfillment, and sales processes.
Open the Item Card and choose the Variants action.
Select the variant that you want to update.
On the Item Variant Card, in the Picture FactBox, choose one of the following actions:
- Import to upload a file.
- Take to use your device camera to capture an image.
- Export if you want to save the current image.
- Delete if you don't want the picture.
Item availability by variant
When you open the Item Availability by Variant page from a document line, then you can insert a variant in the document line by selecting the line with the variant that you want to insert and then choosing the OK button. If you've only used the page to view availability and don't want to insert a variant, then close the page without choosing the OK button.
The page shows one line for each period. Each line shows the item’s availability figures in the following key fields:
| Field | Description |
|---|---|
| Gross Requirement | Specifies the sum of the total demand for the item. The gross requirement consists of independent demand and dependent demand. Independent demand includes sales orders, service orders, transfer orders, and production forecasts. Dependent demand includes production order components for planned, firm planned, and released production orders. It also includes requisition and planning worksheets lines. |
| Scheduled Receipt | Specifies the sum of items from replenishment orders. The calculation includes firm planned and released production orders, purchase orders, and transfer orders. |
| Planned Order Receipt | Specifies the sum of items from planned production orders. |
| Projected Available Balance | Specifies the calculated available inventory. |
| Planned Order Releases | Specifies the sum of items from replenishment order proposals. The calculation includes planned production orders. it also includes planning or requisition worksheets lines that are calculated according to the starting date in the planning worksheet and production order or the order date in the requisition worksheet. This sum isn't included in the projected available inventory. However, it indicates which quantities should be converted from planned to scheduled receipts. |
Require use of variants
Administrators can require that users specify the variant in documents and journals for items that have variants. To activate the capability, on the Inventory Setup page, and select the Variant Mandatory if Exists field. You can override this global setting for specific items.
On item cards, the Variant Mandatory if Exists field has the following options:
| Field value | Description |
|---|---|
| Default (No) | The setting from Inventory Setup applies to this item. |
| No | Users aren't required to specify a variant for this item. |
| Yes | If the item has one or more variants, users must specify the relevant variant. If they don't, they're blocked from posting the transaction. |
Note
These settings don't affect items that don't have variants.
If the capability is switched on, you can't post an entry if the variant isn't specified.
Item references per variant
When your vendors or customers use their own item numbers, set up item references that map their codes to yours, including at the variant level. For example, if a customer orders BLU-LG-POLO and you track it as item 1200, variant BLUE-L, the item reference automatically bridges that gap on sales and purchase documents.
Item references can also carry variant-specific units of measure. If a vendor ships a particular variant in cases of 24 rather than individual pieces, the correct unit populates automatically.
Learn more at Use Item References.
Item translations
If you sell or purchase in markets that use different languages, store translated descriptions for each item and variant combination. When you create a document for a customer or vendor with a different language code, Business Central automatically substitutes the translated description on document lines.
To set up translations:
- Open the Item Card and choose the Translations action.
- On the Item Translations page, specify the Language Code and the translated Description and Description 2 fields.
- To set a translation for a specific variant, fill in the Variant Code field.
When you add the item to a document where the customer or vendor has a different language, the description pulls from the matching translation entry. If a variant-specific translation exists, it takes priority over the item-level translation.
Stockkeeping units for replenishment and planning
When you manage the same item across multiple locations or need location-specific planning parameters for specific variants, set up stockkeeping units (SKUs). A SKU links an item, a location, and optionally a variant code into a planning identity that the supply planning system treats independently.
This system means you can define different replenishment methods, lead times, reorder points, safety stock levels, and even different vendors or production BOMs depending on where and how you stock a variant. For example:
- Variant BLUE is purchased from a local supplier at the East warehouse with a two-day lead time, but produced in-house at the West plant with a five-day manufacturing lead time.
- The reorder point for size Large is higher than for size Small because Large sells faster at a specific location.
Without SKUs, the planning system uses the same replenishment parameters for an item everywhere. With SKUs, requisition worksheets and planning worksheets generate separate supply proposals per location-variant combination.
Learn more at Set Up Stockkeeping Units.
Categories, attributes, and variants
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.
Related information
Register New Items
Use Item References
Set Up Stockkeeping Units
Set Up General Inventory Information
Walkthrough: Variants