Merging Products

The Merge Products program provides a way to combine two product records into one product record. When merging products, the product being replaced is the merge product. The product being retained is the keep product.

Generally, the purchasing agent or whoever maintains the product file uses a self-made report to track what products are created daily through order entry. Usually your Eclipse installer creates this report on site during your system setup. The agent can then make sure that there are no duplicate product records. If there are, you have options to combine the on-hand amounts, bin locations, price matrices, average cost, and price sheets. All transactions such as open orders, purchase orders, transfers, and history are merged to the keep product automatically.

Note: You must be assigned the Ignore User Br Auth When Merging Products control maintenance record to merge products regardless of your user branch authorization.

Product Changes After Merge

After a product merge, the mergeproduct'sstatus changes to Purge and the index type changes to Catalog. The product record is no longer accessible from an product search, except by the internal product ID number. In addition, you can permanently delete the product record from the system when you run the Product Purge program, if needed.

Also after a product merge, the keep product's on-hand value increases to include the merge product's on-hand amount. The demand amount increases to include the demand of the merge product. The system replaces the merge product with the keep product on all open sales orders, open bids and open purchase orders, which together make up the Future Ledger. If indicated during a merge, the system replaces the merge product on all closed orders. The system copies detail lots from the merge product if both products are assigned the Detail Lot type. The system assigns new lot IDs to the copied lots for the keep product. The system updates the change logs for both products.

Merging Serialized Products

When merging serialized products, the following occurs:

A warning message displays if you try to merge a serialized item with a non-serialized item.
The system copies open serial numbers for the merge product to the keep product.
If indicated during a merge, the system deletes serial number history for the merge product and copies it to the keep product.

To merge products:

To merge a single product, from the Maintenance > Merge/Purge menu, select Merge Products to display the Merge Products window.

To merge multiple products at the same time, from the Maintenance > Merge/Purge menu, select Merge Products MULTI to display the Merge Products MULTI window.

In the Keep Product field, enter the ID of the product to keep.
In the Merge Product field, enter the ID of the product to merge.
Use the remaining check boxes to decide which information to keep with the product:

Check Box	Description
Move History	Indicate whether to include history in the product merge. Selected - Merges the history, on-hand amount, and closed orders of the two products. The system deletes the serial number information for the merge product and copies it to the keep product. This is the default. Unselected - Merges the on-hand amount and open orders, but not the history, of the two products. If you leave this field unselected and the merge product has history information, the system cannot purge that product record.
Keep Matrix Cells	Indicate whether to keep the price matrices of the item specified in the Merge Product field. Note: If a matrix of the merged product is a duplicate (ID is the same except for the product number), the system does not copy the matrix.
Move Locations With Zero Onhand	Indicate whether to merge product locations even if the merge product has zero on-hand.
Merge Average Costs	Indicate whether to use the cost of the merge product to adjust the inventory of the keep product. Note: Merging the average costs of two products completes an inventory adjustment. Set the Should Inventory Adjustment Update Avg/Last Costcontrol maintenance record to Yes for the branch in which you are working.
Merge Price Sheets	Indicate whether the system should merge the keep and mergeproduct price sheets. Selected - The system merges the price sheets. If the branch and price sheet for the keep and mergeproducts match, the system copies the price sheet of the product that has the latest effective date with prices defined. If the price sheet is not defined for the branch for the keep product and is defined for the merge product, the merge product price sheet is copied. Unselected - The keep product maintains its assigned price sheet at each branch or territory. This is the default.

If you are merging multiple products in the Merge Products Multi window, repeat steps 2 to 4 for the additional products you want to merge.
Do one of the following to run the merge:

From the File menu, select Hold or click the Hold button, to initiate the merge process and send a report of the merge details to your hold file.
From the Options menu, select Schedule to set up the merge and send the report at another time.

A system message displays after the merge is in process. After successful completion of the merge, a blank Merge Products window displays. The status of themerge productchanges to Purge and the product is no longer accessible through any product search, except by the internal product ID number.