Overview of the concepts for configuring your Projects.
The Project is the central place where all global configurations and settings, such as Channels, Stores, and Tax Categories, are managed. It acts as the foundation for your business setup.
This central configuration enables you to support multiple regions, brand stores, permissions, omni-channel distribution, taxation of products, and shipping costs.
Project
A Project is the top-level entity in the information model. It serves as a secure container for all other entities, for example, Customers, Products, Carts, Orders, and Discounts. Projects are isolated from each other, ensuring data security and integrity. Create different Projects to separate your environments: one for development, one for staging, and one for production.
A Project includes top-level settings such as name and trial end date, as well as the following configurations:
- Countries: the countries to which your business wants to sell products, affecting shipping, taxes, and legal compliance.
- Currencies: the currencies your prices should have, enabling multi-currency support.
- Languages: the languages in which you can have localized content for.
After setting up the Project, you can configure Stores, Channels, and Tax Categories to model your business structure.
Store
Stores let you model the context your customers shop in. Stores can be used to model, for example, physical retail locations, brand stores, or regions. They allow you to define which subset of resources within a Project is available in the context of a Store.
If a Store has no Product Selections, then it will inherit all Products.
Deleting a Store permanently removes all associated Product Tailoring data.
Products available in Store
A Store can incorporate multiple Product Selections, which is useful if a Product Selection is shared between Stores. For example, you may want to create a shared Product Selection as your base catalog which is supplemented by individual Product Selections for each Store.
Channel
Channels let you manage Inventory (supply Channels) and Prices (distribution Channels) available to Stores.
Supply Channels are pipelines for Inventory and define how Products are supplied to Stores. Each supply Channel can be a warehouse, supplier, or other source of Products.
After the disposition process, line items can get supply channel information that would uniquely identify inventory entries that should be reserved.
Distribution Channels manage how Products and Prices are made available across different customer experiences within a Project. A Distribution Channel defines how Prices and Product availability are assigned and managed for each Store, enabling you to configure and control the pricing strategy and assortment for different sales channels.
Relationship between Distribution Channels, Stores, and Retail Locations
Each Store represents a specific shopping experience and can be associated with one or more Distribution Channels. A Distribution Channel can be linked to a physical retail location or an online store, enabling you to manage Prices and Product availability for each Channel separately.
This association allows you to unify pricing and inventory strategies across different sales channels, whether they are brick-and-mortar stores or online shops.
Tax Category
Tax Categories classify Products for taxation in different Regions. They define Tax Rates and rules that apply to specific Products or locations.
A Tax Category groups Tax Rates together, where each Tax Rate defines the tax percentage for a specific country or state. Tax Rates can include subrates for compound taxes (for example, local, state, and federal taxes).
Tax Categories can be associated with Products, enabling automated tax calculations during transactions.
Multi-brand Project configuration
Your Project can support multiple brands, allowing you to manage different brand Stores and Channels within a single Project.
To configure your Project for multiple brands, configure Channels and Stores for each brand:
- Create a Project to serve as the foundation for your multi-brand setup.
- Create Channels for each brand you want to manage. Each Channel can represent a brand store, such as Brand A and Brand B, allowing you to manage Prices and Inventory separately for each brand.
- Create Stores for each brand store. Each Store can represent a physical or online location for a specific brand, such as Brand A Store and Brand B Store. This allows you to manage brand-specific Products, Prices, and Orders within the same Project.
After configuring Channels and Stores, you can manage brand-specific Category structures, Products, shipping options, and other resources.
Omni-channel distribution
In omni-channel setups, you can connect multiple Distribution Channels to multiple Stores, supporting seamless shopping experiences across online, physical, and marketplace Channels. This enables flexible management of Prices, Inventory, and Product offerings tailored to each Channel and location.
To set up omni-channel distribution in your Project, do the following:
- Create a Project with the required Regions and currencies.
- Create Channels for each supply and distribution channel you want to manage.
- Create Stores for each physical or online location where your Products are sold. Then, you can associate Channels with Stores to manage inventory and distribution.