The terms Item Styles and Item Variants

If you sell products in multiple sizes, colours, or other variations, you need a way to keep them organised in Business Central. The style master functionality gives you exactly that. It lets you group related items under one main item and handle the variations either as item variants or as separate item numbers.

You mark one item as the style master and attach a style template to it. The template controls how the matrix is displayed in purchase orders, sales orders, and on the items themselves.

You can choose between two structures. One uses standard Business Central item variants under a single item number. The other uses a separate item number for each variation. Both follow the same logic with a style master at the top.

You can attach specifications as master data to both the style master and to each individual variant. On the style master you might define material and product type. On each variant you might define size, colour, and length.

What the style master functionality does in Business Central

The terminology is straightforward. The style master is the main item, and the style variants are the different versions of it. You mark an item as a style master, and you assign a style template to it. That template defines how the matrix view appears when you work with purchases, sales orders, and items.

Take a racing T-shirt as an example. The style master is the item called “T-shirt racing downhill”. It is checked as a style master and uses a style template. The style master itself is not one of the variants. The actual variants sit underneath it.

Two ways to handle variants: item variants or separate item numbers

You can build the structure in one of two ways, and the choice is yours depending on how you prefer to work.

• Standard item variants. Here you use Business Central’s built-in item variants under a single item number. You can create a large number of variants automatically through a worksheet that comes with the functionality. In the racing T-shirt example, the variants are entered directly as item variants on the style master item.
• Separate item numbers. Here each variation has its own item number. In the example, item 7000 is a touring T-shirt called “T-shirt two bikes countryside” and acts as the style master. A variant such as “Green T-shirt large” is a separate item with its own number. It is not the style master, but it follows the same style.

Either way, the result is the same. You bundle items into a shared style, and the underlying logic recognises which item is the style master and which are the variants. The only difference is whether the variations live as item variants or as distinct item numbers.

Adding specifications as master data to styles and variants

You can tag master data information at two levels: on the style master and on each variant.

On the style master you attach specifications that describe the product as a whole. For a T-shirt that could be the material, for example polyester, what is printed on the shirt, and the product type. For a bike-related item it could be a product type such as racing bike. You attach whatever specification makes sense at the top, style-level.

On the variants you decide whether to copy the style master’s specifications or define your own. In the racing T-shirt example, the variants use size, colour, and length as a three-dimensional specification. You could also have copied the specification from the style master if you wanted to.

When you use standard item variants with master data information, you add a specification for each variant. In the example that is again size, colour, and length, but you can use whatever dimensions fit your products.

This gives you a clean way to attach master data both to the overall style and to each variation, regardless of whether you build the structure with item variants or with separate item numbers.

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