Commerce Studio
Commerce Studio is the operating surface of your business: what you sell, what it costs, who buys it, and what happened to their order. If you maintain the catalog, keep the price lists straight, or sit in the Innendienst working through today's orders, this is the Studio you live in. It is also the largest by a wide margin — most of the Cockpit's screens are here.
/commerce URL prefix.What lives here
Four things carry the weight, and a supporting cast keeps them honest.
Products are the catalog. Not a spreadsheet of articles — a model. Attributes are the fields, families decide which fields a kind of product must have, categories decide where a buyer finds it, reference entities hold the shared records (manufacturer, material, certificate) that many products point at, and assets hold the managed media. A product carries no price and no stock. That separation is deliberate: the same article can cost three different things for three different customers and sit in four warehouses.
Prices are rows, not fields. A price entry belongs to a price list, and a price list is scoped — to a market, a currency, a customer group, a validity window. What a specific buyer sees is resolved at request time from the lists that apply to them, in a defined order, with scale prices layered on top. This is why "the price is wrong" is almost never a typo on a product; it is a question about which list won.
Customers are companies, not people. An organization is the buying company with its VAT ID, its payment terms and its addresses. Contacts are the people inside it, and roles decide what each of them may do — browse, order, approve, see net prices. Segments group organizations for pricing and visibility. Getting this wrong shows up later as a buyer who can see prices they should not, or an Einkäufer who cannot approve anything.
Orders are the record of what happened. An order line freezes the product identity, the resolved price, the tax class from the market and the chosen shipping and payment method at the moment it was placed. Changing a price list tomorrow does not rewrite yesterday's order — and should not. Around orders sit shipments (which is why partial delivery works at all) and returns.
The supporting cast:
| Concept | What it is for |
|---|---|
| Carts | Live and abandoned baskets. The Innendienst opens a buyer's cart while they are still on the phone. |
| Order lists | Saved, repeatable lists — favourites, replenishment templates, per-site standard baskets. List kinds classify them. |
| Stock | Stock levels per location, plus reservations and movements. Usually mirrored from the ERP rather than maintained here. |
| Markets | A distinct business context: a country, a region, a separate brand. Carries locale, currency and tax classes. |
| Channels | Where the same catalog appears with a different cut of data — webshop, punchout catalog, data export. Attributes can be scoped per channel. |
| Payments | Recorded payments, plus the methods and providers a buyer may choose. |
| Shipping | Methods, carriers, the rate matrix, service levels and weight units. |
Read the whole Studio as one sentence: a product says what it is, a price list says what it costs this buyer, an organization says who the buyer is, and an order records what all three agreed on.
Also planned to live here
The following are documented in this Help Center at their 12-month state. The apps are on the roadmap; they are not on your tenant today. They do not change the four things above — each one extends one of them.
Search and Localization are catalog apps. Search owns the index behind the storefront: which attributes are searchable, how they are weighted, the facets, the synonyms your customers actually type. Localization owns the other two axes of the same product record — the languages it is translated into, and the classification standards (eCl@ss, ETIM, UNSPSC) large customers require before they can load your catalog at all. Both are PIM work, not storefront work. See Search & Discovery and Localization & Classification.
Cost centres and approval workflows are customer apps. They reproduce your buyer's own purchasing rules inside your shop: which cost centre an order is booked to, which budget it draws down, who has to sign it off above which value. The buyer's Einkauf does not bend its policy for a supplier's webshop — a shop that cannot represent the policy is a shop the Einkauf forbids. See Procurement & Approvals.
Quotes are a sales app. A large share of B2B revenue is agreed before an order exists: a request comes in, a price is offered, versions go back and forth, and only then does an order appear. Framework agreements are the same mechanism stretched over a year, with call-offs booked against a committed volume. See Quotes & Contracts.
Promotions, coupons and leads are Marketing apps and arrive as a new sidebar section. A promotion is a rule — condition and effect — evaluated on top of the resolved price, which is precisely why it must not be confused with a contract price. See Promotions & Marketing.
Configurators and bills of material extend the product model. A configurable product has no price until it is specified; a machine has no orderable line until a buyer identifies which of its 3,000 parts broke. Both are catalog structure before they are storefront features. See Configurable Products & Spare Parts.
Recurring orders and subscriptions extend the order model — the same basket on a schedule, with a next run date, a pause and a cancellation instead of a single placement. See Recurring Orders & Subscriptions.
The screens
Every path below is relative to the Cockpit host, and every screen sits in one of the Commerce sidebar's four sections: PIM, CRM, Order Management, Configuration — plus Marketing, a fifth section that arrives with the Marketing apps.
Rows marked Planned — documented at its 12-month state describe apps that are on the roadmap and covered by this Help Center, but that are not installed on any tenant today. They have no path yet, so the Path column says not assigned yet; the section named is where the screen will appear once the app is installed.
PIM
| Screen | Path | What it does | Status | Documented in |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| PIM › Products | /commerce/products | The article list. Create, edit and enable products. | Available | Products |
| PIM › Categories | /commerce/categories | The browse tree buyers navigate. | Available | Categories |
| PIM › References | /commerce/reference-entities | Shared record types — manufacturer, material, norm — and their records. | Available | References |
| PIM › Assets | /commerce/assets | Managed media: photos, datasheets, CAD files. | Available | Assets |
| PIM › Data model › Families | /commerce/data-model | Which attributes a kind of product has, and which are required. | Available | Families |
| PIM › Data model › Family variants | /commerce/data-model?tab=family-variants | The axes a product varies along — size, colour, length. | Available | Family variants |
| PIM › Data model › Attributes | /commerce/data-model?tab=attributes | The fields themselves, with type, localizable and scopable flags. | Available | Attributes |
| PIM › Data model › Attribute groups | /commerce/data-model?tab=attribute-groups | How fields are arranged for the person editing. | Available | Attribute groups |
| PIM › Data model › Measurements | /commerce/data-model?tab=measurement-families | Unit families and their conversions — length, weight, pressure. | Available | Measurements |
| PIM › Data model › Association types | /commerce/data-model?tab=association-types | Product-to-product relationships: accessory, spare part, replacement. | Available | Association types |
| PIM › Data model › Asset families | /commerce/data-model?tab=asset-families | The kinds of managed media. | Available | Asset families |
| PIM › Search | not assigned yet | Searchable attributes and their weights, facets, synonyms, stop words and ranking rules for the storefront index. | Planned — documented at its 12-month state | Configure the index · Facets and filters |
| PIM › Localization › Translations | not assigned yet | Locales, which attributes are localizable, translation status per product and per language. | Planned — documented at its 12-month state | Translate the catalog |
| PIM › Localization › Classification | not assigned yet | eCl@ss, ETIM and UNSPSC classes, and the mapping from your attributes to their features. | Planned — documented at its 12-month state | Classify products |
| PIM › Configurators | not assigned yet | Option groups, options, rules and constraints for products that have to be specified before they have a price. | Planned — documented at its 12-month state | Build a configurator |
| PIM › Bills of material | not assigned yet | Assemblies, positions and quantities — plus exploded drawings and compatibility, the spare-part half of the same app. | Planned — documented at its 12-month state | Model a bill of material · Compatibility |
CRM
| Screen | Path | What it does | Status | Documented in |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| CRM › Organizations | /commerce/organizations | The buying companies. | Available | Organizations |
| CRM › Contacts | /commerce/contacts | The people inside them. | Available | Contacts |
| CRM › Roles | /commerce/roles | What a contact is permitted to do. | Available | Roles |
| CRM › Segments | /commerce/segments | Groups of organizations used for pricing and visibility. | Available | Segments |
| CRM › Order Lists | /commerce/orderlists/lists | Saved, repeatable lists a buyer reorders from. | Available | Order lists |
| CRM › Cost centres | not assigned yet | The buying company's own cost-centre master data, its hierarchy and who owns each one. | Planned — documented at its 12-month state | Cost centres |
| CRM › Budgets | not assigned yet | Amount, period and rollover per cost centre, with the reserved / committed / spent ledger behind it. | Planned — documented at its 12-month state | Budgets · The budget ledger |
| CRM › Approval workflows | not assigned yet | Who approves what, above which value, in which order — plus per-contact spend limits. | Planned — documented at its 12-month state | Approval rules · Buyer spend limits |
| CRM › Approval queue | not assigned yet | Requests waiting on a decision, with the approver, the age and the comment trail. | Planned — documented at its 12-month state | Approve, reject, delegate |
Order Management
| Screen | Path | What it does | Status | Documented in |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Orders | /commerce/orders/list | Every order, its status and its lines. | Available | Orders |
| Returns | /commerce/orders/returns | Return requests and their state. | Available | Returns |
| Shipments | /commerce/orders/shipments | What has physically left, including partial shipments. | Available | Shipping |
| Carts | /commerce/carts | Live and abandoned baskets. | Available | Carts |
| Carts › Cart lines | /commerce/carts/items | The individual lines across all carts. | Available | Cart lines |
| Carts › Import/export | /commerce/carts/io-profiles | Profiles for pushing baskets in and out — the basis of quick-order upload. | Available | Import/export |
| Prices | /commerce/prices/lists | The price lists and their scope. | Available | Prices |
| Prices › Price entries | /commerce/prices/entries | The individual prices, including scale tiers. | Available | Price entries |
| Stock | /commerce/inventories | Stock levels per SKU and location. | Available | Stock |
| Stock › Stock levels | /commerce/inventories?tab=stock | Quantity per article per location. | Available | Stock |
| Stock › Locations | /commerce/inventories?tab=locations | Warehouses and branch stock. | Available | Locations |
| Stock › Reservations | /commerce/inventories?tab=reservations | Quantity committed but not yet shipped. | Available | Reservations |
| Stock › Movements | /commerce/inventories?tab=movements | The audit trail of every stock change. | Available | Movements |
| Payments › Payments | /commerce/payments | Recorded payments against orders. | Available | Payments |
| Payments › Methods | /commerce/payments/methods | What a buyer may pay with. | Available | Payment methods |
| Payments › Providers | /commerce/payments/providers | The payment service providers behind those methods. | Available | Payment providers |
| Shipping › Methods | /commerce/shipping/methods | The shipping options offered at checkout. | Available | Shipping methods |
| Shipping › Carriers | /commerce/shipping/carriers | DHL, DPD, Spedition, own fleet. | Available | Carriers |
| Shipping › Rate matrix | /commerce/shipping/tiers | Cost by weight, value or zone. | Available | Rate matrix |
| Shipping › Service levels | /commerce/shipping/service-levels | Standard, express, next day. | Available | Service levels |
| Shipping › Weight units | /commerce/shipping/weight-units | The units the rate matrix is expressed in. | Available | Weight units |
| Quotes | not assigned yet | Quote requests, drafts, versions and their state — requested, sent, negotiated, accepted, expired. | Planned — documented at its 12-month state | Handle a quote request |
| Quotes › Framework agreements | not assigned yet | Committed volume over a period, and the call-offs booked against it. | Planned — documented at its 12-month state | Framework agreements · Call-offs |
| Recurring orders | not assigned yet | Standing orders and subscriptions: the schedule, the next run, the pause and the cancellation. | Planned — documented at its 12-month state | Standing orders · Subscriptions |
Marketing
This section does not exist in the sidebar today. It arrives with the Marketing apps — Promotions, Coupons and Leads — and is documented here at its 12-month state.
| Screen | Path | What it does | Status | Documented in |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Marketing › Promotions | not assigned yet | The rule engine: conditions, effects, validity and scope. Volume tiers, bundles, free goods. | Planned — documented at its 12-month state | Create a promotion |
| Marketing › Coupons | not assigned yet | Codes: single-use, multi-use, bulk-generated, assigned to a sales rep. | Planned — documented at its 12-month state | Coupons and codes |
| Marketing › Bundles | not assigned yet | Kits sold as one line at one price — the machine with its consumables. | Planned — documented at its 12-month state | Bundles and kits |
| Marketing › Leads | not assigned yet | Enquiries that are not yet orders: contact requests, sample requests, callbacks, handed to sales. | Planned — documented at its 12-month state | Forms and transactional email |
Configuration
| Screen | Path | What it does | Status | Documented in |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Markets | /commerce/configuration?tab=markets | Country and region contexts, with their locales and currencies. | Available | Markets |
| Tax classes | /commerce/configuration?tab=tax-classes | VAT rates and how they apply per market. | Available | Tax classes |
| Channels | /commerce/configuration?tab=channels | Webshop, punchout catalog, export — each a distinct cut of the catalog. | Available | Channels |
| Channel types | /commerce/configuration?tab=types | The classification behind those channels. | Available | Channel types |
| Number ranges | /commerce/configuration?tab=number-ranges | The format and sequence of order, delivery and return numbers. | Available | Number ranges |
| List kinds | /commerce/configuration?tab=kinds | The classification of order lists. | Available | List kinds |
| Value lists › Payment terms | /commerce/configuration?tab=payment-terms | Prepayment, direct debit and the Net-days ladder. | Available | Payment terms |
| Value lists › Address types | /commerce/configuration?tab=address-types | Billing and shipping. | Available | Address types |
| Value lists › Lifecycle stages | /commerce/configuration?tab=lifecycle-stages | Where a customer sits in your funnel. | Available | Lifecycle stages |
| Value lists › Activity types | /commerce/configuration?tab=activity-types | The kinds of contact events you log. | Available | Activity types |
| Configuration | /commerce/configuration | The hub the ten configuration tabs live on. | Available | Configuration |
Some data has no sidebar entry of its own. Addresses, activity and category memberships live as tabs on the organization, contact and category details. Attribute options, family attributes, reference entity records and segment members have no Cockpit surface at the moment and are maintained through the apps' APIs — the pages above say so where it applies.
Common tasks
- Create a product — the first one, by hand, before you automate anything.
- Import products — the realistic path for a catalog of any size.
- Set a list price and contract prices — the base, then the customer-specific override.
- Set up an organization — the buying company, its contacts and its terms.
- Process an order — from placed to shipped, including the partial case.
- Check a price — when a buyer says the price is wrong and you need to know which list won.
What is planned for this Studio
Commerce Studio grows more than any other Studio, because most new core apps contribute their screens here. Six of them are already documented in this Help Center at their 12-month state.
| Coming app | Domain | Lands in | Read |
|---|---|---|---|
| Search | Catalog | PIM | Search & Discovery |
| Localization | Catalog | PIM | Localization & Classification |
| Configurators and BOMs | Catalog | PIM | Configurable Products & Spare Parts |
| Cost Centers, Approval Workflows | Customer | CRM | Procurement & Approvals |
| Quotes | Sales | Order Management | Quotes & Contracts |
| Promotions, Coupons, Leads | Marketing | Marketing (new section) | Promotions & Marketing |
| Recurring orders and subscriptions | Commerce | Order Management | Recurring Orders & Subscriptions |
Be clear about what this means today. The articles behind those links describe the finished behaviour, not a preview you can click through: the apps are not installable yet, the screens have no paths, and nothing in your sidebar changes until you install them from the Marketplace. What the articles are good for now is the decision work that comes before the software — which classification standard your customers demand, how your largest account's approval chain is actually shaped, whether your discounts belong in a price list or a promotion rule. That work does not wait for an app, and doing it early is what makes the install a configuration job rather than a project.
None of it removes anything. Products, prices, organizations and orders keep their current shape, and every screen in the tables above stays where it is.
How it relates to the other Studios
Experience Studio renders what you model here. A product is data until a storefront displays it. If an attribute is missing from the product detail page, the fix is sometimes in Commerce Studio (the value is not filled or not scoped to that channel) and sometimes in Experience Studio (the template does not output it). Prices are the sharper case: they resolve in Commerce Studio, but whether a buyer sees a net price at all depends on Experience Studio's login state. An anonymous visitor and a logged-in Einkäufer of the same company look at two different pages.
Integration Studio feeds it. In most Mittelstand setups the ERP is the system of record for articles, stock and invoiced prices, and Commerce Studio holds the enriched, buyer-facing version. Which direction each field flows is a decision you make once — see What is the system of record — and Integration Studio enforces it. When stock looks wrong here, the sync is the first place to look, not the stock screen.
Analytics Studio reports on it. Revenue, order and product analytics read the same tables you edit here, which is why customer and product data hygiene shows up directly as unreliable reporting.
App Studio decides which screens exist. Every Commerce Studio menu entry comes from an installed app. Uninstall the inventories app and the Stock screens disappear along with it.
Building on this Studio?
If you are writing code against it rather than working in it, the Developer Portal documents the same Studio for developers — APIs, SDKs and extension points.