NEIL PARKHURST

As I prepare for the MB2-713 certification (Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2016 Sales) I’m creating revision notes. These are being published as a series of posts in the hope that others preparing for this exam might find them useful.

In this post I will continue to look at the product catalog by reviewing the concepts connected with product bundles.

A bundle is simply a group of products that can be sold as a package. If you sold BBQs maybe a product bundle might be a BBQ grill, BBQ coal and BBQ tool set. By doing this you’d hopefully encourage customers to purchase a greater number of products. Bundles are similar to the old style kits in CRM, bundles have effectively replaced kits as they offer greater functionality.

Once created bundles can be used on opportunities, quotes, orders and invoices. (They are entered as product line items.) Like products, bundles support product relationships enabling cross-selling, up-selling, substitutions and accessories. Bundles have individual pricing.  This means that the bundle will need a price list item, as an individual product would.

You create product bundles in the Families & Products option in the product catalog. Which can be found under settings in CRM.

The ADD BUBDLE option is the command bar. (As shown below.)

Adding a bundle is very like adding a product, as with products you define a product ID, unit group, default unit, price list etc.

Having created the bundle, you can add the products that make up the bundle. For each product in the bundle we set the quantity to include, the units and if the product is required or optional.

Bundles can be associate to product families if required. In the same way that products can be associated with families. (See my earlier post for details on product families.)

It is important to be aware that like with products a bundle needs to be activated before it can be used. (And that all of the products in the bundle will also need to be active.)

Once a bundle has been published (activated) the products within the bundle cannot be changed.

It is also important to consider price lists. As all of the products within the bundle will need to reside in the same price list. Plus, the bundle will need to be added to that price list. The price for the bundle will be derived from the bundle price NOT the sum of the prices from the individual components.

Below you can see how a bundle would show within an opportunity. Notice that the BBQ bundle has been added in my opportunity. Below the bundle you can see a breakdown of the products that make up the bundle. Also notice that the prices for the individual product is £0, this is because the total price to be charged (£200) is against the bundle.

If any of the products in the bundle are associated with a product family that has product properties it will be possible to edit these for each product line in the bundle.

Suggestions may also be available related to the bundle or the products within the bundle. (Just as with “normal” products.)

I hope you can see that the concept of product bundles is quite straight forward but like other parts of the product catalog their creation may take some planning. As you need to consider price lists, product relationships, product families / properties etc.

In my next post I will complete my revision on the product catalog by looking at hierarchical product charts.

I hope this post has given you a good introduction to the concepts connected with bundles and therefore helped you prepare for the MB2-713 exam. J