Offer, Offer Package, Package Type

Offer

Objects of the Offer object type (formerly referred to as 'Pricing Offer') collect information on products and services offered by one party to another. An offer is based on an item type. An item type represents the product or service technically, an offer specifies merchandising information.

Two basic uses of offers are:

• Vendor Offers - offers specifying pricing/delivery details of an item type specifically for a given vendor and a period of time
• Shop Offers - offers used in the context of the 'Service Request Shop'. Shop offer is an offer of the 'Shop' type, i.e. an offer belonging to an offer package whose Offer Package Type = 'Service Shop'.

Although an offer is typically linked to one item type, there can be any number of various offers at one time for one item type and one vendor. These offers can reside in one or several offer packages. Creating an empty offer for a vendor and an item type can be used to register that the vendor is supplying the item type but the exact pricing/delivery details are unknown yet.

Offer Package

Objects of the Offer Package object type (formerly referred to as 'Pricing Document') group offers into meaningful units. In the context of the Shop, an offer package often represents a group of offers with common usage characteristics, vendor offer packages may grouped offers e.g. by vendor and validity.

Offers normally inherit their validity from the offer package they belong to. If necessary, offer validity can be limited to a sub-interval of offer package validity. It cannot, however, exceed the validity interval of the offer package.

Offer Package Type

Object type Offer Package Type (formerly referred to as 'Pricing Document Type') groups offer packages with similar real life representation. It represents a relatively high level of generalization. Typical offer package types are:

• Service Shop Offer Pack - offer package grouping offers for the service shop
• General Contract - general contracts with vendors. Documents with obligatory character for both the vendor and the buyer. Realized volumes of individual contract items are usually monitored.
• Price List - common wholesale/retail price list such as prices from vendor web site or printed catalog
• Pricing Agreement - special offers negotiated with a vendor
• Quotation - prices received from a vendor as a reply to a request for quote.
• Unknown/various sources - A collection of various offers from unspecific sources.  For example, one active offer package for each active vendor could exist to collect offers which cannot be linked to any known real offer package.

See help sections 'Offer Creation' and 'Organizing Offer with Service User Groups' for information on offer creation and working with offers and offer packages.