Item variants

Items that come in sizes, colors, or other variations sell through Business Central item variants. At the register, variants surface in three places: the variant picker, per-variant barcodes, and the variant code shown on cart lines and receipts.

The variant picker

Tapping a tile for a variant-bearing item opens an overlay listing its sellable variants, titled with the item name. Tap a variant to add one unit; Cancel or Escape closes without adding.

How the picker behaves depends on the item's configuration:

Configuration	Behavior
Default Variant Code set on the POS item	No picker - a tap or scan adds the default variant directly (the fast lane).
Mandatory variants	The picker must land on a real variant; no blank option is offered.
Optional variants	The picker leads with a "(No variant)" fast lane.
Blocked or sales-blocked variants	Excluded from the picker, and refused server-side if injected. If every variant is blocked, a toast explains instead of showing an empty list.

The scan box is blurred while the picker is open, so a scan gun firing mid-pick cannot change the cart underneath.

Per-variant barcodes

Each variant can carry its own barcodes as Business Central Item Reference records of type Bar Code. A reference row carries the Variant Code (and optionally a Unit of Measure), so scanning a variant GTIN adds a line for exactly that item, variant, and unit - no picker needed. See Barcode scanning for the full resolution order.

One line per variant

Cart lines merge by the item plus variant pair:

• Adding the same variant again - by tile, picker, or scan - increments the existing line.
• A different variant of the same item always creates a separate line. An M-BLUE scan never merges into an L-RED line.

The cart shows the variant code in the line description, for example "Shirt (M-BLUE)", so two variants of the same item are never ambiguous on screen. The variant code also prints on the receipt line.

Pricing

For a POS item mapped to a Business Central item, prices come from the standard Business Central price calculation - and a variant-specific price list line is honored, so one variant can legitimately price differently from another. An unmapped POS-only item falls back to its POS item price, which is shared across its variants. See Pricing and discounts setup.

Variants elsewhere at the register

• Price check: checking a variant-bearing item runs through the same picker, and the quantity you chose on the price-check card is retained - choosing a variant adds the full checked quantity, not a silent single unit. See Price check.
• Weighed items: when a sold-by-weight item requires a variant, you choose the variant first, then capture the weight.
• Stock: tile stock badges aggregate across variants, while the cart line's shortage hint is variant-exact. See Stock availability.