How to Group Products into 1 and track inventory too

[gerryleblanc]

Does anyone know how to group several products into one "buy" action and have the inventory be tracked for each? I have the need to package multiple products into a single purchase in order to offer a discount for the purchase of all together, but I don't want the user to have the ability to remove individual products from the cart. Perhaps this is easier than I am thinking?

[Jim]

There isn't a product type in ShopSite that will allow creation of a group of products like you are describing. Through custom templates and a few backoffice setting you could accomplish this though.

Using a custom page/product template you can create a multi-add to cart option where you can have multiple products added to the cart in a single action of pressing the Add to Cart button. I believe some of the ShopSite provided template have included this functionality but you can also find how to code it in the help at http://www.shopsite.com/help/12.0/en-US/sc/pro/custom.template.multi-add.html. This can be used inconjunction with subproducts to group a number of different products together as a single group.

There is a setting "Quantity can not be changed" that will make it so the shopper can't change the quantity in the cart it is found on Commerce Setup > Order System > Shopping cart. You will want to check that option so the shopper can't change the quantity to 0 and thus have it removed. Also found on that same screen is "Display remove buttons" if this option is not checked there won't be an option for the shopper to remove individual products from the shopping cart.

[ShopSite Lauren]

I would suggest setting this up with a multi-add-to-cart button, so that multiple products are added to the cart at one time, and setup Quantity Pricing with Quantity Groups, and make it so customers cannot change the quantity in the cart.

Lets start backwards in that list.

To make it so a customer cannot change the quantity in the cart (so they can't change the quantity to 0). Go to Commerce > Order System > Shopping Cart. There is a checkbox on this screen to make it so that quantities cannot be changed in the cart.

Next, you will want to setup a Quantity Pricing Group. Go to Merchandising > Discounts > Quantity Pricing. Create a new group called "package" or whatever you want to call it. Once you have setup the group, go to Products > Edit Product Info, and for each product in the group, setup quantity pricing so that when someone purchases the entire package (for example, if there are 6 pieces in the package, then when the customer purchases a quantity of 6), the product price goes down to the discounted price, the price the product would be in the group. Make sure you have assigned the product to be part of the "package" quantity pricing group.

Last, add your products onto a page, or as subproducts of a "package" product, and have them all be part of a multi-add-to-cart so that when the customer adds to the cart, all 6 items are added to the cart, and because all 6 are added, the customer gets the quantity discount on all 6 products, which equals the regular price for the package, and because the cart doesn't allow customers to change the quantity once they are in the cart, customers wouldn't be able to remove one of the pieces of the package. However, if a customer does remove one of the pieces of the package (if you still allow them to), then once they remove an item, the other 5 products will no longer quality for the quantity pricing, since there aren't 6 pieces, and all products will jump up in price to their regular non-package price.

I could give more information about the multi-add-to-cart setup if I had the URL to your website so I knew what template you were using.

[gerryleblanc]

Lauren,

I always appreciate your replies... I am going to give this a try!

The site is here. An important detail is that this is a Wordpress site using the SS plugin.
http://www.maureenstgermain.com/aromandalas-essential-oil-blends/sound-scent-packages/

This page is a good example of where I'd like to use this technique... where a CD is sold with and essential oil and inventory needs to be tracked for both.

Cheers,
Gerry