SAP CPQ Glossary: The Terms You Will Meet in Every Project

Product catalog. The list of all products in the application, organized by categories. In a setup that uses SAP Variant Configuration and Pricing, users start from a new quote instead of the catalog (see quote-first approach below).

Attribute. Attributes define product features such as color, size, and material. Each attribute has a name, a type, and values. SAP CPQ offers ten attribute types, among them User Selection, Autocomplete, Container, Measurement, and External Value.

Simple product. A basic product type used as a child reference. Its name, part number, prices, and description can be used as an attribute value, which lets the same product be sold on its own or inside a bundle.

Configurable product. A parent product that references other products. Its child items are configured through the Product Configurator, and the quote does not show a clear visual split between parent and children.

Product display types. SAP CPQ has five: simple product, configurable product, collection of configurable products, system (list) of configurable products, and parent/child system of configurable products. They differ in how children reach the quote. Adding a collection puts the products referenced by the selected attributes on the quote as independent line items, while in a parent/child system the children appear below the parent, indented.

Configuration rule. Rules follow an IF-THEN structure: when the condition is true, the action decides what must happen. SAP's training material shows two basic kinds. A disallow dependency stops users from selecting options that cannot go together, and a mandatory dependency selects a required option automatically. We cover how rules stay accurate as products change in our article on product rules for complex quotes, and the wider setup on our complex product configuration page.

Formula Builder. The tool for combining tags, operators, and parameters. It is used both for configuration rules and for price formulas.

Quote. A formal pricing proposal created in the system. Quotes can be searched by number, status, date, owner, customer, contact, or expiration date.

Quote 1.0 and Quote 2.0. Quote 2.0 is the newer quotation engine, available since June 2018. SAP describes it as API driven and stateless, and says the two engines cannot be used in parallel on the same tenant. SAP also states that there is no out of the box solution for a complete migration, so moving from one to the other is a project. Our walkthrough of the 2605 release covers what changed on the Quote 2.0 side.

Tenant. Your organization's own SAP CPQ environment. Because the two quote engines cannot run side by side on one tenant, the engine decision applies to the whole tenant. Teams usually keep a non productive tenant next to the productive one, so changes and releases can be tested first.

Pricebook. A configurable data table that defines product prices for specific markets and gives pricing a lookup source. Several pricebooks sit under a market and share its currency. Attribute pricing, price books, and FX is where we go deeper.

Price code. An optional code used together with the part number. It lets products that share a part number carry different prices across channels.

Pricing methods. SAP's training material describes three: custom pricing, where the total price is the product base price plus the sum of attribute prices; variant pricing, for solutions integrated with Variant Configuration; and pricebook lookup, which retrieves market specific prices. Our pricing automation page explains how we set these up.

Custom field. A field added to the quote, or as a quote item custom field, to each line item. Administrators can specify the permission groups and statuses for which a field is editable.

Calculation. In Quote 2.0 each calculation is a single executed step. Administrators control the order and can insert a custom calculation between standard ones without rewriting the whole sequence.

Quote layout. A customizable template that defines how quotes look in the system. Columns and sections can be reordered by dragging them.

Quote table and custom table. A quote table shows information on a quote tab in table format. Its data comes from a custom table through scripts, for example purchase history, cross-sell products, or shipping addresses.

Solution Design. A tab that organizes quote items into logical folders called sections. It is switched on with the Enable Solution Design parameter, and the Section Builder creates sections manually. The tab is another view of items already on the quote, so they are not treated as duplicates.

Involved parties. In Quote 2.0 they replace Customers, which SAP lists as obsolete.

Approval rule and workflow. An approval rule defines the condition that triggers approval, and by itself it does no work. The workflow has to be configured as well. Our approval workflow page describes how we design the pair.

Standard workflow actions. Submit for Approval (action 25) sends a quote for approval when an approval rule is violated. Approve is action 26, Reject is 27, Approval History is 28, and Retract Approval Process is 53. When the submit action does not appear, see why the submit for approval button goes missing. For pulling a quote back out, read how to retract an approval.

Cancel Changes. Action 58. It retracts all changes made on the quote since the last save, which is not the same thing as Retract Approval Process, despite the shared word.

Approval notifications. Three are predefined: Approval Request Notification, Quote Approved Notification, and Quote Rejection Notification.

Document template. A Word document with tags in it. The Generate Documents action produces documents from it, and they appear on the quote in the Documents tab with a Template Name column. Our quote templates page covers template design.

Quote template tags. Tags are markers that pull data from SAP CPQ into the Word template. Q tags retrieve general quote information such as currency, user data, and customer details, for example <<Q_QUOTE(TOTAL)>> for the total price. C tags show cart item information and work only inside a C2 repeatable quote tag. ST tags are special tags that can be used anywhere in the document. We explain them in our guide to document tags and multi language documents.

Global script and IronPython. SAP defines a global script as a custom piece of code written in IronPython and attached to a certain event. Global scripts are administered under Setup, Develop, Global Scripts, and a Script Workbench is available. SAP limits a single line of IronPython to 50 operators, and since release 2205 scripts that run longer than 20 minutes are cancelled automatically and script size is capped at 40,000 characters. SAP also lists poorly written scripts among the causes of performance problems, which we cover on our SAP CPQ performance page.

Event. Scripting in Quote 2.0 is event based, and each event carries the quote object in its context as context.Quote. SAP warns that most Quote 1.0 scripts will not fit Quote 2.0 logic and have to be adjusted when you move.

Quote 2.0 REST API. The /api/v1/quotes APIs were developed for the new quote engine and are not supported in the old one. SAP also lists SOAP methods such as NewQuote and SearchQuotes as unsupported in Quote 2.0. Our Quote 2.0 API guide goes through what that means in practice.

SAP Variant Configuration and Pricing. For synchronized products, SAP states that product rules are defined primarily in SAP Variant Configuration and Pricing, which it recommends. IronPython can configure synchronized products only through the OnProductReady product event. How this differs from older approaches is in our comparison of SAP AVC, LO-VC, and SAP CPQ.

Quote-first approach. With Variant Configuration integration, the user lands on a new quote and not on the catalog. The market and other fields have to be chosen first, so the configuration can use reference characteristics and pricing attributes. SAP gives customer country or region as an example of a reference characteristic.

Knowledge base synchronization. Simple products imported from an ERP system get attributes and a new product display type through this synchronization. It is started from SAP CPQ, runs daily, and converts simple products into configurable or parent/child products. A change to the product model in the backend that creates a new knowledge base version leads to a new product version in SAP CPQ, and product versions cannot be added or deleted in SAP CPQ.

SAP Cloud Integration. SAP's integration service, often still called CPI. An IronPython script attached to an action can call its integration flows, known as iFlows. Our article on SAP CPI and scalable CPQ integrations explains where it fits.

Release number. SAP CPQ releases carry four digit numbers in which the first two digits are the year and the last two the month, so 2608 is the August 2026 release. The What's New Viewer for SAP CPQ lists new and changed features, and we keep a plain reading of each release on our release notes page.