At the sales screen you can add a Product, a Component and a Process to a sales order. So what's the difference between adding a product and a component? Lets explore this.

We buy Components form our suppliers and we sell products to our customers. We know that a marble trophy is made up of a variety of components such as a base, stem, column, figure, engraving plate, hardware. So components are batched together in a Bill of Materials (or Break Down) to form a product.

But what about a Resin trophy or a Polo Shirt? These may be considered a product rather than a component but in AwardPro they are considered both at different stages. We need to have a products list and a Components List in the AwardPro System so that the range lists are not mixed up with products and components (like an 8080 soccer figure or HW1 Rod all mixed in with products)

Lets look at the resin figure as an example of it being both component and product. In the Retail sales catalogue the Resin figure (e.g. RF123) is a single piece isn't it? but wait there is an engraving plate on it as well so it has now got two components to make up the product. This is how AwardPro sees it and how it is able to have a component list and a product list as separate entities.

Ok so what about the Polo Shirt surely that a single item as a component or a product. Yeah your right of course but wait a minute, you are probably going to add embroidery to it and it's likely that you will out source the embroidery so now you have a shirt and embroidery as two components in the breakdown (Bill of Materials) of the product you are selling.

See also Product and Component Mark Up