Products or services - the items in your proposal as well as the bill of material components - are typically synchronized from SAP material master or created directly in this application if only used for proposal costing purposes.  From the product or service list double-click on an item to open the details, giving several tabs:

• Product key information explained below
• Product estimating parameters
• A view of the product's standard bill of material
• Comments & files attached to this product
• History

The KEY INFO tab has the following attributes:

1. Product or service code, normally synchronized from the SAP material number: MATNR or MPN if manufacturing part number functionality is active in your SAP system. There is no length restriction here however SAP normally limits this field to 18 characters. Those annoying leading zeroes associated with numeric part codes in SAP are hidden
2. What type or kind of product or service this is; a high-level grouping of products and services. This is normally the same as your SAP material types with perhaps 1-2 types added for products or services created directly in this application such as "Travel" or "Other direct cost"
3. The product or service description. You can search for a product by its code or description
4. The commodity code or material grouping code. Some companies will assign inflation or quantity adjustment curves, escalation factors and even overhead rules based on commodity code and provide commodity code reporting to the client, so it is recommended to use an industry standard classification such as NAICS or MIL-SPEC commodity codes. Work with your implementation consultant to define the list of commodity codes and to optionally synchronize from SAP's "material group"
5. Base unit of measure or the unit used for bill of material components. If the product is managed in multiple units, for example a product which is planned or design in "each" but purchased in "boxes" then click on "Manage Other Units" link to invoke the unit of measure conversion popup described below
6. Owner - who is responsible for this product; also called product manager

7. The valuation class is synchronized from SAP's valuation class in the material master accounting view for the primary valuation area (company/plant) managing this product. The valuation class is not used in this application but in SAP it determines the cost element

8. The cost element is for accrual of expenses for this product, for example receiving purchases of this product. This is normally based on SAP's account determination for inventory management postings, set by the valuation class in SAP (with account modifier VBR) and set here by the interface from SAP to synchronize material master data in this application. You can also adjust the cost element manually for reporting purposes and to trigger different calculation rules for indirect costs

9. The payment terms to use for purchased products. While costs are assumed to be incurred based on the requirement date and distribution profile, for cashflow purposes the costs are offset into the future by these payment terms

10. The valuation method which is normally synchronized from SAP and does not have specific functionality in this system

11. Finally you can maintain one or more "costs or prices" for your product or service with different date validities. When you cost  purchased parts the system will try to cost using purchase order history or supplier contracts / quotations first, and will use the standard cost as a last resort. You can also manually adjust an estimate to use the product's standard cost

If you have purchase order history in various units of measure, or in a different unit of measurement to the bill of material definition, then you need to maintain unit of measurement ratios. These are normally synchronized from your SAP material master unit of measure conversion tab however it is also possible to review and edit the unit ratios manually by clicking the "Manage Other Units" link highlighted above. In the units of measure popup you can:

1. Add new units with their conversion ratios to the product's base unit of measure by clicking the + and selecting the unit from the list. You can only add units with no dimension (such as box, carton, parcel etc.) or units which have a different dimension to the base unit (such as converting from a "length" like meter to "weight" like "warehouse storage mass"). You can only view not edit the conversion ratios for units of the same dimension (such as converting from meters or yards, or from kg to lb)
2. Enter the ratio between your unit and the base unit ("Box" to "Each" in this example). In the screen above 1 box contains 15 items or "each" of this product
3. If the new unit of measure is smaller than the base unit then check this box. In the screen above if 15 boxes were required to pack up a single "each" of this product then the "smaller" column would be checked.