In Mercury, data inheritance serves to speed up the proposal creation process. It is crucial to understand which information is inherited and at which point the connection is broken to ensure data integrity in proposals that have already been created.
Overview of the Inheritance Process
- Inventory Item to Proposal Template: When you create a Proposal Template from an Inventory Item, all information is copied. Inheritance is active for fields that are grayed out in the Proposal Template form and have the corresponding "inherit" button. Other fields, such as the values for agency commission and publisher cash discount, are copied but do not automatically update if the original Inventory Item is changed later.
- Proposal Template to Proposal: When a Proposal is created from a Proposal Template, it adopts all the content. From this moment on, however, the Proposal is completely independent. There is no longer any inheritance relationship to the Proposal Template or the Inventory Item.
- Buy Item in the Proposal: If a Proposal Template is generated from an Inventory Item, Mercury automatically creates a buy item when the proposal is created. Alternatively, buy items can be added to the proposal manually. This item reflects the purchasing conditions from the Inventory Item. Similar to the Proposal itself, the buy item is also independent and no longer inheritable from the moment it is created.
Important Rule on Data Integrity
The main reason why inheritance is broken at a certain point is for security and data integrity.
A media planner or client who receives a proposal must be able to rely on the fact that the content will not be changed retroactively without prior agreement. The interruption of inheritance ensures that the data integrity of proposals that have already been issued is maintained, as an automatic, retroactive change of content could lead to unexpected discrepancies and operational complications.