A Practical Step-by-Step Guide for Functional Consultants and Retail Administrators

Before you can sell anything through your POS, online store, or other commerce channels, your products must be properly defined, structured, and released inside Dynamics 365 Commerce.

Retail product setup is more than just creating an item number. It involves organizing products, defining attributes, releasing them to legal entities, and ensuring they appear correctly in stores and online catalogs.

If this setup isn’t done correctly, products may:

• Not appear in POS
• Be missing online
• Show incorrect pricing or attributes
• Fail during assortment or catalog publishing

This guide walks you through the complete and correct product setup flow used in real-world retail implementations.

Overview of the Retail Product Setup Flow

At a high level, product readiness follows this sequence:

Hierarchy → Product Creation → Release → Assortment → Navigation → Catalog

Each step builds on the previous one.

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Step 1: Define a Product Hierarchy (Foundation)

Why this matters

Category hierarchies help you logically group products for:

• Reporting
• Assortments
• Navigation
• Pricing rules
• Discounts
• Attributes

Without a proper hierarchy, managing thousands of SKUs becomes chaotic.

How to configure

Path:
Retail and Commerce → Setup → Product categories and attributes → Category hierarchies

Best practices

• Create business-friendly structures (not too technical)
• Example:

Electronics
   ├── Mobiles
   ├── Laptops
   └── Accessories

• Keep 3–4 levels max
• Align with how customers shop, not how warehouses store

Step 2: Create Products and Variants in Product Master

Why this matters

The Product master is your global product repository.

Here you define:

• Item number
• Product name
• Size/Color/Style variants
• Attributes
• Units
• Barcodes

How to configure

Path:
Product information management → Products → Released products (or Product master)

Types of products

• Item (simple) → Single SKU
• Product master → Variants (Size, Color, etc.)

Example:

• T-Shirt (Master)
  • Red / Small
  • Red / Medium
  • Blue / Large

Best practices

• Use variants for apparel and configurable goods
• Avoid creating separate items manually for each color/size
• Add attributes early (brand, season, material)

Step 3: Release Products to Legal Entities

Why this matters

Creating a product is not enough.

👉 Products must be released to a legal entity before they can:

• Be sold
• Be stocked
• Be added to assortments

How to configure

Action: Release products
Select legal entities (companies)

Real-world example

If you have:

• UAE company
• KSA company

Release products to both if both stores sell them.

Common mistake

“Product not showing in POS”
➡ Usually caused by missing legal entity release.

Step 4: Add Products to Assortments

Why this matters

Assortments decide which products are available in which channels/stores.

Think of assortments as:
👉 “Product visibility rules”

How to configure

Path:
Retail and Commerce → Assortments → Assortments

How it works

1. Create assortment
2. Add products/categories
3. Assign stores/channels

Example

• Store A → Electronics only
• Store B → Grocery only

Each gets a different assortment.

Best practices

• Use category-based assortments (easier maintenance)
• Avoid adding thousands of individual products

Remember

Run distribution schedule jobs after setup so POS receives updates.

Step 5: Add Products to Navigation Hierarchies

Why this matters

Navigation hierarchies control how products appear in:

• POS browse screen
• Online menus
• Self-service kiosks

Without this, products exist but cannot be browsed.

How to configure

Path:
Retail and Commerce → Channel setup → Category hierarchies → Navigation hierarchy

Tip

Design based on customer journey:

Home → Electronics → Mobiles → Smartphones

Not:

Inventory → Dept → Class → Subclass

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Step 6: Add Products to Catalogs (Required for Online Stores)

Why this matters

Online stores require catalogs to:

• Publish products
• Define pricing
• Control availability dates

POS may not require catalogs, but eCommerce does.

How to configure

Path:
Retail and Commerce → Catalogs

Steps

1. Create catalog
2. Add products/categories
3. Validate
4. Publish

Best practices

• Separate catalogs by region/brand
• Schedule publishing during low traffic

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Final Step: Run Distribution Jobs

After all setups:

👉 Run Commerce distribution jobs to sync data to channels

Common jobs:

• 1040 – Products
• 1070 – Channel configuration
• 1150 – Catalog

Without these, POS/Online won’t update.