Accessories are products that make your main product more useful and versatile. For example, a mount for a TV. On D-Tools Cloud, you can classify accessories as “Required”, “Recommended”, and “Optional” to manage how they are added when you add products to quotes.
Check out this article for more details about classifying Accessories and the relevant behavior when adding them to a quote.
Some use cases to add accessories from the Products Catalog are:
You have set the Category Option to Off and want to set the accessories list at the product level.
You want to add product-specific accessories on top of the accessories that came with the Category rule. For example, add mounts depending on the size of the TV.
You want to offer some accessories because the original ones are unavailable temporarily.
You want to bundle some accessories temporarily to boost sales.
Add Accessories in Catalog
Go to "Catalog > Products" and click the 3-dot menu of the product. This will open the Product Details modal.
Go to the “Accessories” tab. Here, you can do the following:
Disable Category Rule and update Accessories for the Product
Disable the Category rule when you want to add or remove accessories that came with the rule. Click “Edit > Disable rule”.
Add accessories from the Search bar or delete the ones that came with the rule by clicking its 3-dot menu and clicking “Delete”. You can also change the classification and quantity of the accessories.
Here, we are changing the wall mount that came with the Category rule for a TV.
From here on, the product, when added to a quote, will use the updated set of accessories.
Edit Category Rule and update Accessories for all Products in the Category
If the accessory you want to add or delete should be updated for all products in the Category, click “Edit > Edit rule”. This will open a modal for the Product Category. Update the accessories list in the Accessories area.
Here, we are changing the wall mount that came with the Category rule for products in the "Display Devices" category.
From here on, all products in the Category, when added to a quote, will use the updated set of accessories.
Apply Category Rule to revert to the original set of Accessories
If you were temporarily using an updated accessories list, say due to the unavailability of an item or a discount offer, you can always revert to the original set of accessories that come with the Category rule.
From here on, the product, when added to a quote, will use the original set of accessories.
More ways to add Accessories
Via Category Rules
While adding accessories in the Products Catalog provides you with a decent degree of automation and ease when quoting, you can further this by defining accessories for the product Category level itself. By doing this, you see entire products in a Category come with accessories.
Typically, add basic accessories at the Category level and product-specific accessories at the Product Catalog level.
Within the Quote
Accessories can also be added from the Items view in the quote. This is helpful when you want to add customer-requested accessories. You can even replace the ones that came with the Category rule and Catalog.