Q & A: on Products for Opportunities

Q: Can you update existing products in the products table?
A: Yes, you can match on a field or fields and update it. One method would be to export all the products, update any of the fields (Name, ItemNumber, Cost, Price) the import back in matching on the Record ID (GUID). Note that custom fields in the Product table are NOT yet editable via OAK!Merge

Q: Can you update existing products in an Opportunity?
A: No, you can only append new products to an Opportunity; one per merge. You cannot update or delete existing ones.

Q: How can I add several products to the same opportunity
A: You can add one product to an opp per merge. ( name, qty, price….)
Note: Add the products to ACT so they are in the Products pull down, before adding opps with those products.

There are 2 approaches that work: each Product is in a different column OR each product is in a different row.

a> Each Product is in a different column
Repeat merges for each product column, doing one per merge. Match on the opps fields and update the product. It will be added to opp and a new total will be calculates
If one opp has 10 products, then you have to do 10 merges, mapping a different column each time.
b> Each product is in a different row:

You start with a file where each Product for an OPP is on its own row. If one opp has 15 products, then there needs to be 15 rows in the Source file for that opp.

Find out which opp has the most products. If you have one opp with 6 products, you would need 6 different source files and do 6 merges.

It usually takes the first product (row) that it finds, so you could delete one from the original and rerun… I don’t trust that, so test it if you try it.

The way I do it, is to delete all the products for an opp except the one I want to add. The each CSV has only one product per opp.

So If the opp with the most products is 6, you would have 6 CSVs. The first one has all the product #1 for all opps, the 6th one, has product 6 for ONLY the opps that had 6 products….. etc