The following kinds of basic data are associated with the product catalog function:

• Data relevant to pricing
• Display options for pricing and currency
• Validity period
• Catalog type
• Authority group
• Unit of measure for display area in catalogs
• Variant (one for each combination of language and currencies for which you want to generate a product catalog)

Depending on settings in Customizing, the following data may also be maintained:

• Catalog code
• Promotion

In order to calculate prices for articles in the product catalog, you must enter a document schema, a reference customer (which may be a store) for whom the system can retrieve sample prices, and sales area data (or click a button to have the system retrieve the sales areas relevant to the reference customer you entered). You can also enter a key date for price determination; the system will use the pricing conditions valid for that date in its calculations; this date must be within the validity period for this product catalog. If you omit the key date, pricing information for the current day will be used.

Pricing depends on the sales area, the document schema, and the customer pricing procedure in the master data for the reference customer used. This will determine the calculation scheme. The system interprets the amount designated as subtotal 1 in the calculation scheme as the normal price and the amount in subtotal 2 as the promotion price.

• In R/3 product catalog maintenance, the system will use the promotion price, if one exists; otherwise it will use the normal price. In any case, only one price is shown.

• In the online store, if there is a promotion price, the system will display the normal price with a line through it, and the second one as the promotion price, so both prices are visible. If there is no promotion price, then only the normal price will appear.

If you omit the document schema, then the system uses a different, SAP Retail-specific algorithm to determine prices, based on the default document schema from the global retail settings in Customizing. In this case, the condition types used for the normal price and promotion price are defined in Customizing for retail pricing.

For each catalog variant you can display prices in two currencies: for example, French Francs and the equivalent in Euro, or $US and $CDN. In each case, the second value will always be derived from the first, based on the latest currency exchange rates.