Sell item variants

Items that come in sizes, colors or other versions sell in Bitta Retail POS through standard Business Central item variants. The register reads the variants from the mapped Business Central item, so there is no separate POS variant list to maintain: add a variant to the Business Central item (Item Variants page) and it appears at the register.

Prerequisites

• The BAA POS - User permission set and a signed-in register. See POS user permissions.
• A POS item mapped to a Business Central item that has item variants. An unmapped POS item never has variants. See Item catalog setup.
• Optional: one barcode per variant, as Item References that carry the Variant Code. See Barcode setup.

Pick a variant at the register

1. Tap the tile of a variant item that has no default variant. The variant picker opens, titled with the item name, and lists every sellable variant as code and description. In the demo company, tap Demo T-Shirt to see (No variant), L - Large, M - Medium and S - Small: variants are optional there, so the picker starts with (No variant) (see Picker rules below).

2. Tap a variant. The picker closes and one unit of that variant is added to the cart. The cart line shows the variant description and code, for example Medium (M), and the receipt line carries the variant too.

To close the picker without adding anything, choose Cancel or press Escape. While the picker is open, the scan box is blurred, so a scan cannot add a different item underneath it.

Picker rules

What happens when you tap a tile, or scan a barcode that names only the item, depends on how the item is set up:

Item setup	Tile tap	Item-level scan
Default Variant Code set on the POS item	Adds the default variant, no picker.	Adds the default variant.
Variants mandatory, no default	Picker with the sellable variants only.	Refused: "Item ... has variants. Scan the variant barcode or pick the variant on the item."
Variants optional, no default	Picker that starts with (No variant), then the variants.	Adds the item without a variant.

Whether variants are mandatory comes from Business Central itself: the item's Variant Mandatory if Exists setting, resolved against the default in Inventory Setup. Bitta Retail POS asks Business Central for the answer rather than keeping its own rule.

Blocked variants

A variant that is Blocked or Sales Blocked on the Item Variants page is never offered in the picker. If a blocked variant reaches the register anyway, for example through its barcode or as the default variant, the add is refused with "Variant ... of item ... is blocked and cannot be sold." If every variant of an item is blocked, the register shows "No sellable variants are available for this item." instead of an empty picker.

One line per variant

Adding a variant that is already in the cart raises the quantity of that line. A different variant of the same item always gets its own line, and so does the same variant in a different unit of measure. Two variants of one item are therefore never merged, and each line keeps its own variant code through to the posted invoice.

Set a default variant

When one variant accounts for most sales, an administrator can make it the default so cashiers get a one-tap add:

1. Open POS Items, then the item's POS Item Card.
2. On the Business Central Integration FastTab, confirm that Has Variants is checked (it is read-only and reflects the Business Central item), then choose the variant in Default Variant Code. Leave it blank to make cashiers pick.

The other variants stay reachable by their barcodes, which always name their own variant.

Variants in other register flows

• Price check: a price check of an item-level barcode or tile follows the same rules as the scan column above, so a mandatory-variant item needs its variant barcode. See Price check.
• Weighed items: when a sold-by-weight item needs a variant, the picker opens first and the weight is captured after you choose. See Sell by weight with scales.

What's next

Answer "how much is this?" without touching the sale: Price check. For which registers offer which controls, see Setups by store type.