If a customer requests a sales offer for a product, you may be able to offer various variants of the product. Examples are:

• A different model with different functionality and a corresponding preliminary costing and price
• Different batch sizes with corresponding prices

Offer variants enable you to make a customer different offers. You can do so by linking different sales lines within a sales offer to each other. The different offer variants are registered as different sales lines.

You create a sales line of the 'Normal' line type, that will serve as the current sales line. This is the sales line that would be chosen automatically if you are turning the offer into an order. In addition, you will create multiple sales lines of the 'Offer variant' type, which will serve as variants of the first sales line. Once the customer has told you which offer variant he prefers, you will mark the sales line corresponding to this variant as the 'Normal' line type, and you will use this line to create the actual order. To create the actual order, run the Choose offer variant process.

Creating offer variants

Let's assume you have a part 'A', which you can deliver in a green or red version. These parts are variants. You can register these variants in the following manner:

1. Open the Sales module, Sales offers form, and create an offer.
2. Click the Lines button, and add a sales line for part A, Green.
3. Open the Edit menu, and choose Copy to sales line.
4. Select the sales line you have just created, and open the Offer variant tab.
5. Change the Line type to 'Offer variant'.
6. Under Variant of, indicate that it is a variant of Part A, Green.
7. In the Description field, enter the text "Red". This field is for internal use and is not printed on standard documents.
8. The memo field on the Offer variant tab allows you to enter a comprehensive description of this variant. This information will be printed on the default sales offer.
9. Once you have defined multiple variants on a sales line, you can display a list of all existing offer variants. To do so, open the Information menu, and choose Offer variants.

Note: For lines of the 'Offer variant' type, the 'Offer' or 'History' status type is mandatory.

Note: Lines of which the subline is '000' can only be offer variants of lines. Lines of which the subline is not '000' can only be offer variants of sublines.

Tip: To distinguish between sales lines of the 'Normal' type and the 'Offer variant' type in reports, mark the lines themselves as 'Normal' using the Choose offer variant process from the Edit menu. The distinction will be visible, for example, in the Sales offer report, and on the List tab (grouped by line type).

If you are using the offer variants functionality and you have created different offer variants, you will have one sales line of the 'Normal' line type that serves as the current sales line. This is the sales line that would be chosen if you are turning the offer into an order. If you want another line to be the current sales line, for instance because you want to mark another sales line as the 'Normal' line, or because the customer opts for a particular variant, you can use the Choose offer variant process.

This process ensures that:

• The line selected will be assigned the 'Normal' type.
• The variant references (of which the offer is a variant) are automatically converted

You have the option of making your choice permanent. This is a quick and efficient way to ensure that:

• You determine the line status yourself.
• Other lines will be assigned a status of the 'History' type. You can then assign a reason to these lines to indicate why this offer variant was not chosen.

The 'Offer variants' form shows a detailed list of all existing offer variants related to the current sales line.