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How to Manage Attributes And Attribute Sets

Contents

Objective

Attributes and attribute sets are used by companies to manage warehouses efficiently as attributes are additional information of each stocked product.

There are many scenarios where companies may use product attributes:

There are two types of product attributes, attributes can be instance attribute or not. The difference between them is that an instance attribute implies to track the item on the warehouse.

Manage Attributes And Attribute Sets01.png

The attribute "Color" is not an instance attribute because:

A Lot number is an instance attribute because:

The use of proper product attributes help companies to manage their stock and therefore their warehouses efficiently.

This article is going to focus on the first attribute type, non instance attributes.

Recommended articles

Using attributes for warehouse management requires a clear understanding of what attributes and attribute sets are.

It is also important to understand what warehouse management means in Openbravo, and take a look at how warehouses are structured with storage bins.

Finally it is important to know how Lot number sequence and serial number sequences can be configured in Openbravo. The way to make those work will be explained in a different how to article.

Execution steps

The company in this example needs to follow below steps:

Attribute & Attribute Set creation

In Openbravo, the company in this example sells clothes, therefore needs to manage and sells shirts.
Shirts can be white, red or green and can have small, medium or large size.
The price for all shirts is the same, however it is important to know how many red, white and green shirts are stocked at every moment and the size of each of them.

The company in this example needs to create "Color" attribute, this attribute has three possible values:

Manage Attributes And Attribute Sets02.png

Some meaningful fields to take into account while creating "Color" attribute are:

The company in this example creates same way "Size" attribute with three possible values:

Manage Attributes And Attribute Sets03.png

As last configuration step an attribute set needs to be be created.
An attribute set is a combination of attributes, once created can be assigned to the products, therefore every time the product is managed, that means purchased, stocked or sold, Openbravo will ask for every attribute value of the attribute set.

An attribute set can include just one or a set of attributes, furthermore an attribute set could also include serial numbers and lots, but that is not going to be explained in this article.

Manage Attributes And Attribute Sets04.png

A meaningful field to notice is:

Product creation

At this point, the company in this example can create the products required and configure them with the above created attribute set.

Manage Attributes And Attribute Sets05.png

There are some meaningful fields to take into account while creating a product with an attribute set:

Product management

The company in this example purchases and receives 10 Green-Large shirts and 5 Red-Medium shirts.
Goods Receipts window allows the company to receipt the purchased shirts:

Manage Attributes And Attribute Sets06.png

It is mandatory to register the Color and the Size of each product received and therefore good receipt line.
Although Green and Large values are shown by default, as those are the default attribute set values, both values can be changed to any other value already created of this attribute set, for instance, "Red" and "Medium".

The "Attribute" window is used to select the attribute values for incoming products. This window is launched by pressing the "magnifying glass" icon of the product field located in the goods receipt line.

Manage Attributes And Attribute Sets07.png

It is important to remark that it is not possible to add new values to the attributes from this window, but just select previously created ones.

As 15 shirts have been received, those ones will be shown in the Stock Report.
The Stock Report is used to check goods quantities as well as goods location at a certain date.

Manage Attributes And Attribute Sets08.png

Although there are 15 shirts, the report properly shows that there are 10 Green-Large shirts and 5 Red-Medium shirts in a given warehouse and storage bins.

Manage Attributes And Attribute Sets09.png

The process is similar while shipping products with attributes or while moving products with attributes from one warehouse to another, as it is only possible to ship or move a product having a certain attribute set value if there is stock of that product in the warehouse.
The product selector help us to know which is the product quantity on hand for a product having a given attribute set while creating a goods shipment line or a goods movement line.

Results

This completes the Attribute and Attribute set creation and its use. As a result:

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