Core Concepts
The data model concepts you need before working with Propeller's APIs. This page covers the building blocks you will encounter in every implementation. Domain-specific concepts like pricing layers, quote flows and orderlists are covered in the relevant guides once you need them.
Tenants and channels
A tenant is the foundation of all data in Propeller. Everything lives inside a tenant: products, prices, companies, contacts, orders, quotes and all other commercial data. Each Propeller environment operates within a single tenant.
A channel represents a specific frontend or sales experience, such as a webshop, a B2B dealer portal or a mobile ordering app. Each channel belongs to one tenant, and a tenant can have multiple channels.
Channels handle presentation-specific configuration: SEO settings, templates, catalog structure, languages and anonymous user behavior. The underlying commercial data (products, pricing, customers, orders) is shared at the tenant level, while each channel maintains its own customer experience.
Example: a single tenant powering three channels:
- An Amazon Business Germany storefront
- An acme-us.com dealer portal
- An iOS/Android mobile ordering app
All three channels share the same product catalog, pricing rules and customer data, but each presents a tailored experience to its audience.
Products and clusters
The basis of commerce in Propeller is products. A product is a sellable item with its own SKU, price and stock level.
A cluster groups related products together as variants of a single item. A cluster can also have cluster options, which are add-on product groups like insurance, accessories or extended warranties that customers can select alongside the main product.
Categories
Categories organize products into a hierarchical navigation structure. Each product belongs to exactly one category, and each category has exactly one parent category. There is no limit to the number of hierarchy levels.
Customers, companies and contacts
Propeller distinguishes between B2C and B2B account models:
- A customer is a B2C buyer
- A company is a B2B business entity with addresses, pricing and settings
- A contact is a person associated with a company who can place orders and quotes
Orders
An order is an object that can be created from a cart or through other means such as a direct API call. It follows a lifecycle defined by its order status. In B2B scenarios this lifecycle often includes a quote flow: a contact submits a quote request, a sales representative provides pricing and upon acceptance the quote converts into a confirmed order that moves to fulfillment.
Concepts you will encounter later
The following concepts become relevant as you go deeper into specific implementation areas. Each is covered in detail in the relevant guide.
Pricing and pricesheets. Propeller's pricing model uses pricesheets, which are pricing configurations assigned to customers, customer groups or channels. This enables customer-specific contract pricing, tiered volume pricing and promotions.
Orderlists. An orderlist is a customer-specific catalog that controls which products are visible and orderable for specific companies or customers.
Attributes. Attributes extend the default properties of products, categories, customers and other entities. Propeller supports six attribute types: Text, Integer, Decimal, Enum, DateTime and Color. Enum attributes reference a valueset, a predefined list of allowed values. Covered in the product model guide.
Next: API Landscape
Now that you know the core data model, learn which API to use for what.