Products & Variants in Brahmin Solutions
This article explains how Products and Variants work in Brahmin Solutions and how different item types are classified in inventory.
What is a Product?
A Product is a high-level grouping used to organize related items. It acts as a parent category and does not hold inventory or pricing itself.
Key points:
A product can have one or many variants
Product names should remain generic
Do not include attributes like size or color in the product name
Examples:
Table
Chair
Best practice: Use products for logical grouping and manage differences such as size or color at the variant level.
What is a Variant?
A Variant is the actual item that is tracked and transacted in the system.
Variants hold:
Inventory quantities
Pricing
SKU / Variant Code
Purchasing and selling rules
Important details:
Every product has at least one variant
If multiple variants are not enabled, the system automatically creates a single default variant
Each variant should have a unique SKU (Variant Code)
While SKU uniqueness is not enforced by the system, it is strongly recommended.
Product and Variant Item Types
Item behavior is controlled using four flags:
Buy
Sell
Make
Kit
Based on these flags, items typically fall into the following categories:
Materials (Raw & Packaging Materials)
Items used to manufacture finished goods.
Used as inputs in production
Typically have the Buy flag enabled
Not sold to customers
Subassemblies / Batch Items / WIP
Intermediate items used within larger assemblies.
Can be consumed in manufacturing
Can also be sold directly to customers
Commonly use Make, Buy, and/or Sell flags
Products for Sale
Finished goods sold to customers.
Must have the Sell flag enabled
Can be:
Manufactured internally (Make)
Purchased from vendors (Buy)
Bundles / Kits
Items composed of other items.
Built from multiple components
Use the Kit flag
Inventory behavior is driven by component items
Creating and Managing Items
Items can be created:
Individually through the user interface
In bulk using a CSV import
After creation:
View product groupings via Inventory → Products
View and manage individual items via Inventory → Inventory
If you’re unsure whether something should be a product or a variant, default to keeping products broad and letting variants handle operational detail.