Products, Pricing, and Configuration
Configuration and pricing decide what is sold and what it costs before a quote exists. Keep the two halves separate in your head.
Products and configuration
Product2 records carry a product family (for grouping and reporting), a product type, and optionally a bundle structure. A bundle is a parent product with options; each option sits in an option group and can be marked required or constrained, for example with a fixed included quantity or a minimum and maximum number of selections. Feature and constraint rules model dependency between options. Validation, selection, and alert rules enforce business logic: validation rules block a configuration, selection rules auto-select or filter, alert rules merely warn.
Pricing
Price book entries supply the base price. Price rules adjust it: each has price conditions (when it fires) and price actions (what it does, such as a percentage, a fixed amount, or a formula). Discount schedules provide volume or term-based tiers, including subscription tiers driven by quantity or term length. Contracted prices and manual quote-line overrides sit even further downstream.
Traps
- Evaluation order, not stacking. Price rules resolve in evaluation order and generally the first match applies. Do not assume every matching rule multiplies together unless the design explicitly chains them.
- Constraint placement. A constraint injected on the option product affects only where that option is used; the option group is the usual home for group-wide rules.
- Attributes versus fields. Configuration attributes exist to drive pricing and rules without creating custom fields on Product2.
Rule of thumb
Find the trigger in the stem, then map it: quantity threshold → discount schedule tier; bundle composition → constraint; cross-sell → selection rule; one-off negotiation → quote-line override.
Worked example
A 20-seat subscription at $10 per seat with tiers 1–10 = 0% and 11+ = 20%. If tiers are marginal the price is 10 × $10 plus 10 × $8; if the tier applies to all units it is 20 × $8. The stem's wording about how the tier applies decides which.