Published at: 2026-09-17

Product management configuration overview and core terms

Learn how products, items, multiple units, and unit objects relate to each other. Then choose the product management model for your enterprise.

Management goals

A product is the CRM module for managing basic enterprise product information. It is also the base reference object for sales, quotes, orders, contracts, and other business records. Administrators control how users maintain product data through the item and multiple-unit features. Product maintainers then create and maintain products according to the selected model.

The item feature provides unified maintenance of shared product information. The multiple-unit feature manages units and conversion relationships. You can enable either feature independently or enable both.

Core concepts and terms

Concept	Definition	Configuration impact
Product	Business data for a specific product or service that the enterprise sells.	Business records such as sales, quotes, orders, and contracts can reference it.
Item	An object that maintains shared product information.	After you enable the item feature, products relate to items.
Nonvariant item	One item corresponds to one product.	No variant product set is created.
Variant item	One item corresponds to multiple products.	Each product corresponds to one variant combination.
Variant combination	A set of variant values that distinguishes a variant product.	Select it when creating a variant product. The product name is generated from the item name and variant values.
Unit	A unit of measure used by a product.	After you enable multiple units, a unit object manages units centrally.
Multiple units	The capability to relate one product to multiple units and maintain conversion relationships.	Determines whether a product supports multiple units.
Shared information	Information maintained by an item and synchronized to related products, such as category, unit, and variant information.	You cannot edit centrally maintained item information separately on a product page.
Base unit	The base unit of measure in a multiple-unit conversion.	A multiple-unit configuration must include at least one base unit.

Four configuration modes

Item feature	Multiple-unit feature	Management result
Disabled	Disabled	Maintain basic information and one unit directly on each product.
Enabled	Disabled	The item maintains shared information. A nonvariant item maps to one product; a variant item maps to multiple products.
Disabled	Enabled	The product maintains multiple units and their conversion relationships.
Enabled	Enabled	A nonvariant item’s multiple units are maintained on the product. A variant item’s multiple units are maintained on the item and shared by related variant products.

Management boundaries

When the item feature is disabled, only the product object exists. Maintain category and unit information directly on the product.
After you enable the item feature, the item maintains shared information such as category and unit. The product page maintains only business-specific information.
For a variant item, one item can map to multiple products. Each product maps to one variant combination.
After you enable multiple units, a product can relate to multiple units and maintain their conversion relationships.
For a variant item, the item centrally maintains multiple units. All related variant products share the same configuration.

Responsibilities after configuration

Role	Primary responsibilities
System administrator	Enable item and multiple-unit features and confirm the configuration combination and maintenance boundaries.
Product maintainer	Create products, select items or variant combinations, and maintain information allowed by the current model.
Business record user	Reference configured products and units in quotes, sales orders, sales contracts, and other business records.

Key field

The Product Category field identifies the shared category for related products and items.