# Setup: Product status automation

The Product status represents the life stage of the product. Norce has built-in rules and automations for letting the product catalog automatically handle some of the steps in a product life-cycle. You can disable these totally or change some the rules, depending on your requirements.

## Required steps

- Set up a price list structure
- Set up an inventory structure


## Preparations

Understand how the clients wants to handle their product catalog. In which systems are products "born"? And where is it decided to end a product's life?

## How-to

Your decisions above decide on how you want to set up the integration of your products as a whole. Note that:

- You might need to change the Sku status automation settings, see below, if required.
- Set activation and deactivation of products, by using `StartDate` and `StopDate` on the SKU element in Connect integrations (or manually in admin)
- Manually lock specific product's status in the admin UI so that it won't change by automations.


### Further configuration

Fiddle with the [client settings](/user-portal/settings/client-settings), specifically

- **Sku Status automation**, which lets you change the default behaviour of the status automation.


## Further reading

- Read about the Status rules [here](/solution-portal/detailed-design/product-status-rules).


## Where to go from here

- Product enrichment
- Migrate products