Inventory (Kits?) And Case Pricing

[netblazon]

I want to create a product and have a dropdown attribute with options for single, 4/case and 8/case, each with their own pricing.

All have the same base product, but the single item represents 1 of the main item, the 4/case option represents 4 of the main item, and the 8/case represents 8 of the same item.

How do I do this? I figure it has something to do with kits, but I don't know how to configure it. The kit doesn't represent multiple different items, just multiples of the same item.

Thanks,
Susan

[netblazon]

Can the master product and its part be the same product, maybe?

Or do I have two make two products - one that represents an individual item and isn't visible to the customer; and another that represents what the customer sees, which would have the individual item as a part with 1, 4, or 8 as the quantity?

[delcorsets]

netblazon I just went through this exact same process! The master product and it component can be the same product.

I'm curious to hear how it works out for you.. we had some challenges due to some unique site customization, but we have it working now.

[delcorsets]

Do you track inventory on your products? We had an issue with the Current Inventory adjustment being off by 1 - I'm curious if encounter the same thing.

[netblazon]

Yes I am seeing that too. I think what's happening is that it's decrementing once for the "kit" and then once for each quantity of the item that is part of the "kit". That's what makes me think that Miva doesn't prevent a kit item from containing itself as a park, but it may really not be designed for it either. I'm just not sure.

[delcorsets]

Making an adjustment for the inventory discrepancy is easy for case quantities greater than 1; simply reduce the quantity level required for the component when setting up the parts of the kit.

For the 1-count option it was a little more tricky. Our hack-ish solution was to create an "adjustment product" with no cost and no inventory tracking. It's only purpose is to be added as the single part/component in the Inventory Kit Builder when setting up the 1-count variants.

[netblazon]

I hadn't even thought of that about reducing the quantity in the part! Very smart. I get what you're saying about the adjustment product...that's the situation I'm trying to avoid. I'm guessing you can use a single "adjustment product" for all items you offer this way - you don't have to make different adjustment products for each one? One extra product isn't bad at all. 100 extra products is.

Thank you so much for your input. If nothing else, I have a usable way forward now!

[delcorsets]

I actually just posted a dream feature request here - https://www.miva.com/forums/forum/ge...ase-quantities

Regarding the "universal" adjustment product, we tried that first but it came with another issue.. Orders imported into the ShipStation admin show the part SKU and not the Master Product SKU... weird right? I'm not sure if that's a feature or a bug. It made it very difficult for order pulling.

To eliminate that problem we decided to make a unique "adjustment product" for each kit that required one, just the kits that had single-unit options.. For the unique adjustment product we use the same SKU as the master product but appended it with -SQO (single quantity option.) We assign it with the master product's main product image (because ShipStation also pulls that in,) and we assign it to an availability group so that shoppers can't find it on the site.

A lot of steps, but it's working now that we have the process in place.

If you're not using ShipStation you may be able to get away with just using one single adjustment product.

[netblazon]

delcorsets:

I just learned something - you can add and remove PARTS from regular inventory variants. You don't actually need kits here.

Instead, I set up the base product, attribute, and options, and then made inventory variants instead of using the kit builder. As I had a single, 4-pack, and 8-pack options, it made 3 variant products. Then under Inventory Variants, I edited the 4-pack and 8-pack and removed the original part (variant product) and added the single part with the correct quantity. So it looks like the attached image. Then you just track inventory at the _single variant product; the master product can have inventory turned off. (You can even delete the two unused multiple-pack variant products if desired.)

https://i.imgur.com/L4RBSpP.png

Brennan at Miva explained how to do this and it appears to work flawlessly and doesn't require any extra products. (Thank you Brennan!)

Hope it helps you or others as well.

Susan

[delcorsets]

Susan,

Wow, I'll definitely test out that configuration.

My only question about that however is will product reporting be available? Since product sales reports aren't currently available on the variant level (or are they in v.10?) it might not be possible to run reports for total units sold monthly, quarterly, etc.

Please let me know how that turns out for you.. even though I spent a lot of time setting up the clumsy solution I have in place, I'd be tempted to switch it to the solution you describe as long as I could run reporting on the single-product variant.

[netblazon]

delcorsets - sorry I don't know that answer to that yet. I don't have any plans to set up any custom reporting in Miva for this client, but if I do and this comes up, I'll let you know what I find.

I do think this would solve the ShipStation issue though!

[delcorsets]

As a follow up, I did successfully create a product using the single-unit variant as the Part for the other bundled variant products. The inventory tracking works perfectly, no need for an "adjustment product," but unfortunately reporting does not work on the variant product.

We need a solution that will allow us to easily run reports on how many actual units we sell for re-ordering purposes.