Item fields relevant for the Sales Department

The item card in Business Central holds a number of fields that matter specifically to the sales department. You set the unit price, decide whether prices include VAT, and define special prices and discounts directly from the card. You can also build item category hierarchies, control whether stockout warnings appear on sales orders, and block an item from being sold entirely.

The unit price on the item card is the default standard price. It is not tied to a specific customer, unit of measure, or currency. For customer-specific or volume-specific pricing, you use the sales price list.

You can choose whether the unit price includes or excludes VAT. This depends on whether you mainly sell to B2B or B2C customers.

You can define a relationship between the unit price, the cost price, and the profit percentage so that one value is calculated automatically from the others.

You can block an item from sales by setting the Sales Blocked field, even if you continue to purchase or manufacture it.

Item category code and category hierarchies

The item category code on the Item tab lets you distinguish items by category. When you open the item category codes, you can build hierarchies in as many levels as you want. For a given category you can add a parent category, which means you can structure your items into category hierarchies. This is useful when you want to work with items in a structured way, for example on a web shop. You can also add attributes per category.

Common item number

The common item number is an information field. If you work across several companies, including international companies, you can use it to set up a shared item number for all companies even though the actual item number differs from company to company.

Catalog items and the stockout warning on the Inventory tab

On the Inventory tab you have a field that shows whether the item was created from a catalog item. A catalog list can hold many items from a vendor that you display to your customers without having created them as real items yet. When you create an item from that catalog list, this check mark tells you that it originated from a catalog item.

The stockout warning field is relevant for sales orders and is set per item. The default is Yes. You can set it to Yes or No to control whether a warning pops up on the sales order line when you enter an order and do not have enough inventory.

Tariff number and country of origin for Intrastat

On the Costing & Posting tab you set the tariff number and the country/region of origin code. These are used for Intrastat reporting. Whether you need to report Intrastat often depends on the size of the company, but if you do, you set these fields up here.

Unit price and VAT handling on the Prices & Sales tab

The Prices & Sales tab is the part of the item card that matters most to salespeople. The unit price is the item’s default standard price when you sell it. It is not specified per customer, per unit of measure, or per currency.

You can select whether the unit price is by default including VAT or excluding VAT. If you set it to exclude VAT, you see the unit price excluding VAT, so you can see the difference. The right setting depends on whether you normally handle B2B or B2C customers.

Linking unit price, cost price, and profit percentage

You can decide whether there should be a relationship between the profit percentage, the cost price, and the unit price.

• If you set the profit to be derived from price minus cost, the profit percentage is calculated automatically.
• If you set the price to be calculated from profit percentage and cost, the unit price is not something you enter manually. It is calculated automatically.
• If you choose no relationship, the values are independent of each other.

Special sales prices and discounts

You can define special sales prices and discounts directly from the item card. This is the same menu as the special prices you reach from the sales menu. If no special price exists yet, you can create one from here. Once a special price exists, the card shows that sales prices exist, and you get a quick look up into the sales price list.

In the sales price list you can set prices per customer, per unit of measure, per starting and ending date, and per currency code.

Invoice discounts and item discount groups

You can mark whether the item allows invoice discount. This means you can have items that are excluded from the invoice discount when you give customers an invoice discount.

You can also define an item discount group. This lets you bundle items into discount groups. When specific customers buy items in a group, they get the defined discounts. It is a way of setting up discount relations between item groups and customer groups.

Sales unit of measure and blocking an item for sales

You define the sales unit of measure code when the sales unit of measure differs from the base unit of measure on the item card.

You can block the sale of the item. If you set this field, it is no longer possible to sell the item or enter it on a sales line. This means you can block an item for sales even though you may have started to buy or manufacture it.

VAT business posting group for filtering prices

You can set a VAT business posting group for the price. You use it as a filter to define whether the item should be priced including or excluding VAT for certain customers. This way you can distinguish whether the price on the sales line, and what the customer sees, includes VAT or not.

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