Using Subproducts to calcualte the price of the Main Product

[circlekstrings]

Hello everyone in Shopsite land - a BIG HAPPY NEW YEAR to everyone - I hope your 2013 is prosperous!!

I have an interesting question, and im not sure if this is something shopsite can even do, but here we go.

We sell musical instrument strings, we have an estimated 400 different gauges of string. We sell them as singles and as sets.

Our set prices are simply calculated base on the price of each individual string.
example:
string1 = $2
string2 = $2
string3 = $3
string4 = $4

SET 1 which includes strings 1,2,3,4 = $11

so is there anyway to do the following:

have item "SET 1" include subproducts "string 1,2,3,4" but the 'add to cart' button is for all 4 subproducts? - and remains listed as "Set 1 - sub products 1,23,4"

this will help us greatly with inventory tracking and pricing, so if a single strings becomes cheaper or more expensive - we cahnge ITS price and the sets are also reflected, this would also allow for quantity pricing to match the single strings.

I have been messing with the subproduct option but it only lists them for individual purchase

thanks in advance

C

[Jim]

Subproducts are individual products and they can't be combined to give a single price for another product.
You might look at using the product options and create have the product be the brand of string and the options be the various strings, one option for each string plus a set option that includes all the strings in the set something like this for the options
Select Cello string/set;n
C string
G string
D string
A string
Complete set of CGDA;*3.95

The options would then appear in a pulldown with the text Select Cello string/set and in the pull down list C string, G string, D string, A string, Complete set of CGDA. The ;n on the first option means that a choice must be made before you can checkout. the ;*3.95 means that the set will cost 3.95 times the base price of the string product. Note that with the Basic options the inventory would not be tracked separately for any of the strings.

If you enable the Advanced options then you can track inventory for the individual strings but the complete set would not be figured into the inventory of the individual strings automatically but you could set an inventory quantity for sets and have that tracked.

You might also consider using the Quantity Pricing groups feature which will allow a discount of a certain number of items of the same group are purchased. This would allow you to give a discount if 4 strings are purchased but it wouldn't stipulate that they had to be CGDA so they could purchase 2 C and 2 A for example and still get the quantity discount.