Product
A Salesforce object that represents an item or service your company sells, stored in the product catalog with details like name, description, product code, and family, linked to price books for pricing.
Definition
A Salesforce object that represents an item or service your company sells, stored in the product catalog with details like name, description, product code, and family, linked to price books for pricing.
In plain English
“A Product in Salesforce is an item or service your company sells. Products live in your product catalog with details like name, description, product code, and family. They link to price books for pricing and get added to opportunities and quotes when you're working a deal.”
Worked example
Underwell Manufacturing maintains a catalog of 280 Products in Salesforce - each Product is a record on the standard Product object with a name, description, product code (SKU), product family, and active flag. Products are added to Quotes and Opportunities as line items, with prices coming from Price Books linked to the Product. When the company launches a new product, the data team creates the Product record once; from that moment, AEs can sell it, support can entitle on it, and reports can roll up its revenue. Products are the central catalog that everything sales-related references.
Why Product matters
A Product is a Salesforce object that represents an item or service your company sells, stored in the product catalog with details like name, description, product code, and family, linked to price books for pricing. The product catalog is the foundation of sales operations: every deal involves products, and accurate product data is essential for forecasting, pricing, and reporting.
Product management in Salesforce involves maintaining the catalog with accurate names, codes, descriptions, and pricing, plus organizing products into families for reporting and grouping. For organizations using Salesforce CPQ or Revenue Cloud, product management is more sophisticated, with bundles, options, and configurations supporting complex sales scenarios. Mature sales operations treat product catalog management as a core responsibility with clear ownership and update processes.
How to create Product
Products are the catalog of what your business sells. They're cheap to create but useless until they're added to a Price Book — that's the most common gotcha for new Salesforce admins.
- Open the Products tab
App Launcher → Products. Most orgs put this in the Sales app navigation.
- Click New
Top-right of the list view.
- Enter Product Name and Product Code
Name shows up in pickers; Product Code (like a SKU) is what your finance and ERP systems use as the join key. Make Code unique even though the platform doesn't require it.
- Set Product Family (optional but useful)
A picklist that groups products for reporting (Software, Hardware, Services). Reports group by Product Family by default.
- Tick Active
Inactive products don't appear in product pickers on Opportunities or Quotes — leave Active = true unless you're retiring it.
- Save
Product exists. Now the critical step: add a price.
- Open the Standard Price Book → Add Standard Price
On the Product detail page, scroll to Price Books → Add Standard Price → enter List Price → Save. Until this step, the product cannot be added to Opportunities or Quotes.
Required by the platform.
- A Product cannot be added to Opportunities or Quotes until it's in a Price Book with a price. New Products without a Standard Price entry are invisible to Sales.
- Active = false hides the product everywhere — including on existing Opportunities. Use this when retiring a product, not when pausing.
- Products can't be deleted if they're referenced anywhere (any Opp/Quote/Order ever). Deactivate instead — that's the supported retirement path.
How organizations use Product
Maintains their product catalog with discipline, with clear ownership and a regular review process for accuracy.
Uses product families for grouping and reporting, organizing their catalog into logical hierarchies.
Combines product records with Salesforce CPQ for bundles, configurations, and complex pricing.
Trust & references
Straight from the source - Salesforce's reference material on Product.
- Products and Price BooksSalesforce Help
Test your knowledge
Q1. What is a Product in Salesforce?
Q2. What links products to pricing?
Q3. What's used for product grouping?
Discussion
Loading discussion…