odoo/documentation#20071

Created by Natalie-the-technician

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Natalie-the-technician:saas-19.4-fix-variants-packagings-categories

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be7522065ac648db1d87bf01ac0f2c4821858aad

[FIX] docs: correct four statements about variants, packagings and categories

This PR corrects three inaccurate statements and adds one missing one. All four were
verified against odoo/odoo saas-19.4 at commit cbed569e, both by reading the source
and by measuring on a freshly created database.

1. Sales / Variants: dynamic variants are not created by sales orders only

content/applications/sales/sales/products_prices/products/variants.rst:119

What it said: ":guilabel:Dynamically: Creates variants only when corresponding
attributes and values are added to a sales order."

Why that is wrong: product.template._create_product_variant() is called from seven
places outside of tests: two in the Sales app, three in eCommerce, one in Point of Sale,
and one in Purchase.

(_create_first_product_variant() at addons/product/models/product_template.py:1448 also
calls it, but only to materialise the first variant when a product is copied, so it is not
an entry point for choosing a combination and is not counted here.)

Measured on a database with no Sales module installed (product, purchase, stock,
purchase_stock only): enabling the purchase "Variant Grid Entry" setting and filling two
cells of the grid created two dynamic variants. Odoo's own test asserts the same behaviour:
addons/purchase_product_matrix/tests/test_purchase_matrix.py:20 expects 7 variants where
the non-dynamic attributes alone would produce 4.

The sentence about Inventory was added because the opposite was measured on the same
database: confirming a purchase order and validating the incoming receipt created no
variant. There is no field in addons/stock that selects a combination of attribute
values — stock.move, stock.move.line, stock.quant and stock.lot all point at
product.product.

2. Inventory / Packaging: packagings are not product-specific

content/applications/inventory_and_mrp/inventory/product_management/configure/packaging.rst:10

What it said: packagings "must be configured on the individual product form. This is
because packagings are product specific, not generic."

Why that is wrong: the model product.packaging no longer exists in this version.
Searched the whole tree (643 addons directories plus odoo/addons):
grep -rn "_name = ['\"]product.packaging['\"]" addons/ odoo/ returns 0 hits.

A packaging is now an ordinary uom.uom record. The quantity it holds comes from
relative_factor/factor on that single global record
(addons/uom/models/uom_uom.py:17-43); uom.uom has neither product_id nor company_id.
Products reference the packagings they may use through product.template.uom_ids, a
many2many labelled "Packagings" (addons/product/models/product_template.py:159).

Measured: two different products were given the same packaging and both referenced the same
uom.uom record, so one packaging cannot hold a different quantity per product. The only
product-specific part is the barcode, carried by the helper model product.uom, whose
fields are allowed_uom_ids, barcode, company_id, product_id, uom_id — no quantity field.

3. Inventory / Packaging: the setting is called "Units of Measure & Packagings"

Same file, line 132.

What it said: to reveal the field, "tick the :guilabel:Product Packagings checkbox".

Why that is wrong: read from a running database, res.config.settings has no field whose
name contains "packaging". The setting is group_uom, labelled "Units of Measure &
Packagings", implying group uom.group_uom ("Manage Multiple Units of Measure"). The
category field carries groups="uom.group_uom" in view
stock.product_category_form_view_inherit.

The menu path was already correct and is unchanged: group_uom does appear in
stock.res_config_settings_view_form, inside the block titled "Products".

The same paragraph also referred to the field as "Reserve Packaging"; the field's actual
label is "Reserve Packagings" (product.category.packaging_reserve_method, options
"Reserve Only Full Packagings" and "Reserve Partial Packagings"). Aligned.

4. Accounting: product categories do not inherit from their parent category

content/applications/finance/accounting/get_started.rst, after the list of product category
fields.

What was missing: the page lists the accounting fields on the product category form but
never says what a subcategory does with them. The hierarchy does not carry them down, and
nothing on the page says so.

Measured on a fresh database. A parent category was created and every writable field set
to a deviating value, then a child category was created with parent_id pointing at it. For
all seven fields — expense account, income account, stock valuation account, price difference
account, stock variation account, costing method, inventory valuation — the child differed
from the parent and matched a category created with no parent at all. Changing the parent
afterwards had no effect either: the parent was moved to fifo and real_time while the
child stayed on standard and periodic.

The values come from the company. These fields are company_dependent and fall back to
ir.default; ir.property no longer exists in this version. Changing the company's expense
account propagated immediately to the child category and to categories created before the
change, while a category holding its own value kept it.

The note deliberately states only what was measured: no inheritance, filled in from the
company defaults, and later parent changes have no effect.

Checks

• make fast succeeds. The warning count is unchanged from the base branch (1 warning,
  about the optional local odoo/odoo checkout, unrelated to these files).
• make test reports the same 990 findings as the base branch, byte for byte. None of them
  concern the changed paragraphs.
• The built HTML was checked for each change: the new wording is present and the old wording
  is gone.