Please explain kits

[ZLA]

Any posts on how to set up kits? Help and wiki are not helpful and Good Reference Posts only has two threads that don't deal with the basics. I tried searching the forums but I'm not about to read hundreds of posts in the hopes of finding the basics.

How can I build a kit for a rocking horse that includes two options: Assembled and Color. If the customer selects this item, they must pick Yes or No for Assembled (via drop down) and Blue or Pink for Color.

This is a test for learning purposes. Do not respond by saying I can do this with just a product template or with straight options / variants.

Thank you.

[Logan Rhodehamel]

I hate to say it, but this scenario you described is not well suited to kits. What you seem to have are two distinct products (blue horse and pink horse). Each product has one option (assembled or unassembled).

A kit is more like a collection of products. Take for example one of those do it yourself stuffed animal places... first you select the animal (first product choice), then you decide whether to pay an extra dollar for the sound (second product choice- optional), and maybe you want to pay an extra dollar for a gold heart instead of the free red one (third product choice). The total price of the kit is a combination of the animal, the sound, and the heart.

[ZLA]

You wouldn't believe the size of the dent from hitting my head against the wall about stuff like this.

I was going down the kit path because of this post: viewtopic.php?f=42&t=11869. All I wanted was to get the cost of goods for an option choice. Admin Manage Options lets you add this but it's not used by the order process. So I'll have to add my own table and use triggers to populate it.

If you have other ideas, please let me know.

[Warning to future readers: Don't use identity columns because AC code uses @@IDENTITY(), not Scope_Identity().]

[kastnerd]

That can be done with kit or options.

Build your master product, then add the kit parts to it.

With kits you make a product called "assembled" and " unassembled" and add both of them as the component "assembly"
Select "in input type as drop down"

Then you make 2 more products called "blue horse" and "pink horse" and add a component called "color"
Select "in input type as drop down"

[ZLA]

Thanks kastnerd. A few follow-up questions since I haven't worked with kits before.

1. It sounds like in this case, the kit is just a way to let the user choose between 4 different product combinations:

• Assembled and Blue
• Assembled and Pink
• Unassembled and Blue
• Unassembled and Pink

So how are the prices and cost of goods determined for the master product if each sub product has its own price and cost of goods?

2. Can I make all the subproducts hidden products so they don't appear except as part of the master kit product?

[AbleMods]

1. It sounds like in this case, the kit is just a way to let the user choose between 4 different product combinations:

• Assembled and Blue
• Assembled and Pink
• Unassembled and Blue
• Unassembled and Pink

That is correct. Given your situation, that's the best way to do it.

So how are the prices and cost of goods determined for the master product if each sub product has its own price and cost of goods?

With each kit component you put together, you're going to add the products to that component. As you add each product, you decide if the price of that product does nothing to the original product price (use product price), modifies the original product price (modify price) or replaces the original product price (use fixed price).

So in your case, you would set the "assembled" component products to modify the price +$25 and the unassembled ones just use product price. Assuming of course you're wanting to charge for assembly. Notice the + sign because you can also make a kit component product subtract from the product total instead of adding to it. Simply specify a negative dollar amount.

2. Can I make all the subproducts hidden products so they don't appear except as part of the master kit product?

Yes in fact the AC7 demo data makes use of this technique. None of the component items of the demo data kit product are seen, so the visitor only sees the master kit product from which to make their purchase choice(s). Most people put the component parts into a separate category and mark the whole category as visibility-hidden.

[kastnerd]

Well if you want them hidden then they would need to only have a single option. And dont select drop down select hidden.
Price and cost if gathered from all the parts combined.

[Logan Rhodehamel]

To make use of the kit though, I think you are going to have to do something like this...

Set up three products

1) Pink Rocking Horse
2) Blue Rocking Horse
3) Rocking Horse Assembly

If the COGS issue is not a problem here, you could also make a single product (Rocking Horse) with the color option for #1 and #2.

In the kit, your first component would offer a selection between which horse was desired (the pink or the blue). You could use a radio or a dropdown or whatever is appropriate.

The second component would simply be an optional (e.g. checkbox) selection to include the assembly. It would be a service product rather than a tangible good.

[ZLA]

I appreciate the response Joe. Unfortunately, this is in regards to all my other posts today about variant cost of goods. Guess what, kits don't work either. The cost of goods doesn't get adjusted in the order tables.

Even if kits did adjust the cogs, it probably still wouldn't work for me. I need the cogs info so I can send it to the vendor via xml file. Currently I iterate over items and then sub-iterate over item inputs. A normal nested loop or sql join. This makes sense and matches the Stone Edge Order Manager's xml layout:

Code: Select all

<Product>
  ... product details ...
  </OrderOption>
    ... option details ...
  <OrderOption>
</Product>

But kits would require something completely different so I could use one order item as the option to a different order item.

Plus the fact that it requires much more effort to create and manage a kit for something simple like this than if I could use the Manage Variant screen which includes a Cost of Goods field.

So I'm going to go with a sql solution and separate table that will work with Manage Variants. I hope this didn't come across as complaining to you. I appreciate all of your posts. It's just that I'm still amazed at all the little stuff that AC can't handle out of the box. Using products as the names of options is wrong and a bad design. Using kits to build something as a component or to do something out of the ordinary makes sense. Using them to handle the cost of goods adjustment for options is just lacking.

[ZLA]

Yes in fact the AC7 demo data makes use of this technique. None of the component items of the demo data kit product are seen, so the visitor only sees the master kit product from which to make their purchase choice(s). Most people put the component parts into a separate category and mark the whole category as visibility-hidden.

How is this configured as it doesn't seem to work in my setup. The demo Sample Category is set to hidden. But I can search on master products and their kit sub-products assigned to Sample Category and have them appear in the search results. The products are all still set to visible. Can you send me an online demo link for me to check this out?

[AbleMods]

Whoops I said visibility:hidden and meant to say visibility:private. My bad

I didn't see any references about COGS so I wasn't aware that's where you were headed with this post.

COGS isn't getting stored in ac_orderitems for your orders?

[ZLA]

It's the cogs for the option variants I'm not getting. Edit Kit Part doesn't haven't any cost of goods modifier. I just checked and my kit part has a price modifier of 10.00 which does come through on its order item. But it's cogs says 0.00 even thought this kit part product has a cogs of 5.00. I also tried the kit part as use product price but cogs still says 0.00.

Any idea what I'm doing wrong with the kits and cogs values?

FYI, these are my other posts on the actual problem I'm trying to solve:

• viewtopic.php?f=42&t=11867
• viewtopic.php?f=42&t=11869

[AbleMods]

ok I *think* I see what you mean.

So COGS isn't coming through to the line items in ac_orderitems whether it's a kit or a variant?

Seems to me that would be a bug in both variants and kits. I need to check my tables and see if COGS is coming through on my variants

I agree kits should have a COGS modifier just like it has a price modifier. Or at least pass COGS from the originating product into ac_orderitems.

Since all of that functionality is handled in CommerceBuilder, I don't see any way to fix it without full source or Able doing a patch.

[ZLA]

I agree kits should have a COGS modifier just like it has a price modifier. Or at least pass COGS from the originating product into ac_orderitems.

I'd actually prefer it to somehow pass through the COGS from Manage Variants. The field is there and stored in the database but it doesn't get used anywhere in the order tables. Oh well.