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ReportSupply chain companies are usually concerned with the variations of items which represents a bottleneck of their daily operations as related to purchasing, storing, tracking and selling these items. The concept is item variants can be literally defined as any variation in the characteristics of the item/product such as: size, color ..etc.
Dynamics NAV provides a simple yet comprehensive functionality to handle the item variations under the same item card rather than creating multiple item cards for each item variant combination separately which can be quite confusing. An example of the item variants is provided below, an item than has three basic characteristics/ variations type which are:
- Size | XSmall, Small, Large, XLarge.
- Color | Red, Black, Yellow, White, Pink
- Model | Model 2015, Model 2016
From a theoretical perspective, any item that is defined under the classification mention above should have one card and three primary variation types/ characteristics, each of them could have multiple number of values.
Lets consider the item variants above (Size, Color and Model) . Supposing that the size includes four values (XSmall, Small, Large and Xlarge). The color dimension includes five values (Red, Black, Yellow, White and Pink) and finally the model dimension includes two values (Model 2015 and Model 2016). The result is (4*5*2 = 40) possible combinations.
| Model | Size | Color |
| Model 2015 | Xsmall | Red |
| Model 2015 | Xsmall | Black |
| Model 2015 | Xsmall | Yellow |
| Model 2015 | Xsmall | White |
| Model 2015 | Xsmall | Pink |
| Model 2015 | Small | Red |
| Model 2015 | Small | Black |
| Model 2015 | Small | Yellow |
| Model 2015 | Small | White |
| Model 2015 | Small | Pink |
| Model 2015 | Large | Red |
| Model 2015 | Large | Black |
| Model 2015 | Large | Yellow |
| Model 2015 | Large | White |
| Model 2015 | Large | Pink |
| Model 2015 | XLarge | Red |
| Model 2015 | XLarge | Black |
| Model 2015 | XLarge | Yellow |
| Model 2015 | XLarge | White |
| Model 2015 | XLarge | Pink |
| Model 2016 | Xsmall | Red |
| Model 2016 | Xsmall | Black |
| Model 2016 | Xsmall | Yellow |
| Model 2016 | Xsmall | White |
| Model 2016 | Xsmall | Pink |
| Model 2016 | Small | Red |
| Model 2016 | Small | Black |
| Model 2016 | Small | Yellow |
| Model 2016 | Small | White |
| Model 2016 | Small | Pink |
| Model 2016 | Large | Red |
| Model 2016 | Large | Black |
| Model 2016 | Large | Yellow |
| Model 2016 | Large | White |
| Model 2016 | Large | Pink |
| Model 2016 | XLarge | Red |
| Model 2016 | XLarge | Black |
| Model 2016 | XLarge | Yellow |
| Model 2016 | XLarge | White |
| Model 2016 | XLarge | Pink |
> 40 possible combination of the item variants.
In this essence, it is impossible to create 40 item cards, the system must be capable of providing a functionality to create one item card and three associated item variants. Below, is a quick illustration of how the classification above is automated in Dynamics NAV.
Create a new item, considering the general details as shown below
Item Card
On the “Navigate” tab, click on “Variants” in order to fill out all possible combinations:
Item Variants
Now, on the inventory item journal, make sure that the “Variant Code” column is added. (To do so, right click on the header >> Choose Columns > Insert the Variant Code). For every line item, you can enter the associated variant code as shown below:
Item Journal – Variants
Variant Reporting
On the Item Availability, there is an option to check the available stock of an item by item variants. See below:
Item Availability by Variant
Best Regards,
Mahmoud M. AlSaadi
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