Using ProductCart - Products assembled into sets

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Products assembled into sets

Printed From: ProductCart E-Commerce Solutions
Category: ProductCart
Forum Name: Using ProductCart
Forum Description: Running your store with ProductCart
URL: https://forum.productcart.com/forum_posts.asp?TID=5458
Printed Date: 10-March-2025 at 4:15am
Software Version: Web Wiz Forums 12.04 - http://www.webwizforums.com

Topic: Products assembled into sets

Posted By: Dayv3
Subject: Products assembled into sets
Date Posted: 22-January-2013 at 4:03am

Is there a way to assemble individual parts into different sets?

For a simple example, lets say I have 5 apples, 5 oranges and 5 peaches
and I want to sell fruit baskets.

In real life I can take my pile of fruit and sell them in different combinations
such as (set 1) 3 apples 3 oranges and 2 peaches or (set 2) 2 apples,
3 oranges and 4 peaches. Etc..

Is there a way to make PC make the sets from a defined inventory
(5 apples, 5 oranges and 5 peaches) like a person can?

I have a BTO version and can not figure out how to do this. (if it does)
I want PC to track the inventory of 5 apples, 5 oranges, and 5 peaches
and NOT the inventory of sets that are made from the fruit.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Replies:

Posted By: Guests
Date Posted: 23-January-2013 at 12:51am

Hi @Davy3,

I see the dilemma.

I was under the impression that if a BTO product were built from standard products (as opposed to BTO component options), the inventory on the standard products a user selects in their build of the BTO product would tick inventory off of those component products.

I just ran a test, and this does not appear to be the case. I set up a BTO "Gift Basket" products with the option to select by check box with qty configured standard products: Apples, Oranges & Peaches. I set the BTO parent/shell product to disregard stock, but gave stock to the component products which were not set to disregard stock.

When I placed the order, stock was not reduced from the component products.

This doesn't seem to make any sense to me. Perhaps I'm missing something. It would seem that configurable BTO products would not have any use for inventory themselves. If they are build of component products (apples, oranges, peaches), that's where the inventory should be tracked by definition of BTO.

If I set the parent/shell BTO product not to disregard stock, then it can't be ordered ... so that option doesn't appear to cause stock not to be ticked off against the component products.

Hamish, Matt ... am I missing something here?

If I'm not, this should not be a difficult issue to customize ... we're just probably two weeks out before we could take it up.

Posted By: Guests
Date Posted: 23-January-2013 at 12:56am

Sorry: here's a link to this test:
http://pc46b-otb-net.3060.wmsmerchantservices.com/productcart/pc/configurePrd.asp?idProduct=145" rel="nofollow - http://pc46b-otb-net.3060.wmsmerchantservices.com/productcart/pc/configurePrd.asp?idProduct=145

Posted By: Dayv3
Date Posted: 23-January-2013 at 1:36am

I spent a bunch of time playing with this before I posted.

I too was scratching my head and saying that this just can not be
right being that sets are a real world application for the software to support.

To me, it would seem that it would work this way I but, I guess not.

Hopefully EI will add or correct this in a future update.
I too will wait for Hamish or Matt, or others, to chime in.

Dave

Posted By: Brett
Date Posted: 24-January-2013 at 3:40am

Why not use BTO items instead of standard products? Though it definitely seems like the stock should subtract for standard products as well.

Posted By: Dayv3
Date Posted: 24-January-2013 at 10:13pm

It would seem that you would want to be able to sell the same products as a
standard product and as a set (a fruit basket) at the same time.

That way, using my example, a customer can buy just an apple, (a standard product) or
a fruit basket (a BTO item) that is made from a combination of the three fruits (apples,
oranges and peaches).

The database? It will be tracking the inventory of the fruit independent of how it was sold.
The discrete fruit (a standard product) will have inventory in the database and the fruit baskets
will not have any inventory because they are made from the discrete fruit.

Posted By: Guests
Date Posted: 24-January-2013 at 10:44pm

Hi Dave,

I'm with you. Frankly, I'm a bit baffled that it doesn't work this way as that would make complete sense with the whole concept of BTO -- to be able to build a product (say a computer or a gift basket) assembled from other component products (say, this or that hard drive or this or that fruit).

You can do this in QuickBooks, for example, and it would tick off the inventory of the component products.

I don't expect this would be difficult for PC to be adjusted for this -- I almost kinda wonder if it was intended to do and this is just an oversight.

Would be real nice if we could get some EI feedback on this.

Posted By: Brett
Date Posted: 25-January-2013 at 12:11am

It looks like this issue has been resolved in 4.6b. I created a BTO Item, a Standard Item, and added both to a BTO Product. I selected each option and, upon completing the order, 1 unit was subtracted from the BTO item's stock, and one from the standard product's stock.

Here's the BTO Product page: http://www.liftchair.co/configurePrd.asp?idproduct=29

and this is the standard product: http://www.liftchair.co/Test-Standard-Option-34p31.htm

If you place an order for the BTO product and select the standard product option, you can go and see that the stock has been decreased, just as it is with the BTO item.

I may be mistaken here, but I believe this issue has been resolved in 4.6b

Posted By: Guests
Date Posted: 25-January-2013 at 2:35am

Thanks for this test, Brett.

Someone's mistaken somewhere, and I hope it's me!

The demo site I tested on is PC 4.6b, as the first bit of the URL indicates.

I'd like to invite you to log into that control panel and compare the configuration. Hopefully I'm just being daft (I have my smart days and my not so smart days, right?). If you find that the CP settings are the same, but we're getting different results, that will be interesting.

I'll PM you the credentials.

Posted By: Brett
Date Posted: 25-January-2013 at 3:13am

Sounds good Sean. I believe mine is a clean 4.6b installation, so it's definitely odd that we're seeing different results. Maybe it's due to my test BTO product including both a Standard Product and a BTO Item as options.

Posted By: Guests
Date Posted: 25-January-2013 at 3:22am

Hey Brett,

Thanks again for your test. I was just sending you creds to log in and compare settings, and decided to do one more test, and now I'm getting the same results as you on PC 4.6b (BTO version).

Like Dave, I spent a fair amount of time testing different configurations (Kelly is more our BTO expert, but I wanted to look into this myself) and I had a hard time believing that this wouldn't be possible with BTO. As with many things in PC, it is so feature-rich with so many possible options, that sometimes it's rather a labyrinth to find the right combination of options to get one's desired result.

The config setting I had earlier that I just changed was that the parent BTO / shell product was set to ignore inventory, though none of standard products configured with it were. So, to get this result it looks like one must have and track inventory on the parent BTO / shell product even though might be irrelevant to one's business rules. Then the standard products configured with the BTO product need to have, of course (as that's the big concern here), inventory set and not disregarded.

So, now we're both getting the same result and it appears to be the one Dave is looking for.

Dave, perhaps you're running an earlier version that an update was latter applied to? Are you running 4.6b or something earlier?

Or perhaps you, like me, didn't get the config options quite right? Hopefully my notes above help, and Brett's test encourages you ... if you're indeed running 4.6b and not something earlier.