Articles and Article Groups

When creating orders or quotations in Lime CRM, and the article registry either contains a lot of articles or is updated often, it is convenient to include articles and article groups in the ERP sync.

Articles and article groups are typically synced from the ERP system to Lime CRM, where they are kept readonly. Article groups are synced first, which means that synced articles can be linked to their correct article group. There is typically a timestamp on the articles in the ERP system, indicating when an update of the article information, e.g., name, active status, was last made. When that timestamp is updated, the information will be synced to Lime CRM again. In some ERP systems, the currently in stock value is also stored as a property on the article object. This is not included in the standard sync though, but possible as a customization.

In some ERP systems, a corresponding "Article Group" object is missing.

Common Customizations

There are a number of different ways to work with articles and prices, depending on industry, size of company, internationalization etc. To better cater for scenarios like these examples, or other, it is possible to add customizations to the article sync.

In the standard sync of articles, only one sell price is set on the article. If prices in several currencies should be synced, this requires a customization. Another common example is syncing price lists, for example per customer or per customer classification. These can be with either exact prices or percentage discounts for either specific articles or whole article groups, or a mix of those.

Another example of a sometime important piece of information to sync to Lime CRM is the current stock level of articles. If synced, that can be added to the CPQ in Lime CRM to make the creation of quotations even more powerful and smooth for the sales rep.

Deletion of Articles or Article Groups

In most ERP systems, an article or article group is not deleted, but rather set as inactive. That is synced to Lime CRM so the article or article group becomes inactive there too.

If it is however deleted from the ERP system, then it will not be found when the next sync runs to Lime CRM, which means that you need to delete it manually in Lime CRM as well. This is however not recommended, since that would remove all historic usage of that article. It is recommended to mark it as inactive instead.