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Products (PIM) overview

The Product Information Management area (PIM, labelled Prices & Products in the menu) is where suppliers' product catalogues live: each product's identity, attributes, media, and — most importantly — its prices across one or more price zones and effective-date periods. It is the platform's catalogue of what suppliers sell and at what price, used by the buying group to compare suppliers and check price changes, and by suppliers to maintain their own product data.

PIM is a per-site feature: it only appears when Products is enabled in the site configuration, and the whole menu is hidden from anyone holding the nopim role.

The pieces

  • Product catalogue — the searchable product list (Product List), with supplier/category/zone facets, completeness scoring, and bulk actions.
  • The product record — what a single product is: its data model, price zones, media, and completeness. See editing a product for the detail screen and its tabs.
  • Basket of Goods — a like-for-like price-comparison matrix you build across suppliers.
  • Price Comparison — a report comparing two price snapshots, or an uploaded supplier price file against current data, with an approve/reject step.
  • The PIM calendar — a calendar of product and price changes by day and supplier.
  • Importing and exporting product data — spreadsheet import with per-supplier field mapping, and reusable export templates.

How products relate to the rest of the platform

  • Each product belongs to a supplier (a company) and, through a deal, to a deal category and team — its category and team are inherited from the deal, not stored on the product.
  • Product media are held in the document system; price data usually arrives as an uploaded price-list document that is then imported.
  • Product prices feed supplier price comparisons but are not the same as rebates — rebates are calculated on trading turnover, whereas PIM prices are catalogue/list and invoice prices.

What members see vs what suppliers see

Buying-group users (the member role) see all suppliers' products. Supplier users are automatically scoped to their own company's products only — the catalogue, exports, and comparisons all force this server-side.