Magento’s configurable products are great. But I’ve run into some things about them that I do not like. If you are just selecting colors, sizes, or simple options where the price doesn’t change, or it changes very little, then configurable products are awesome. When you run into an instance where there are significant price differences, then configurable products can really stink.
Here’s an example: Let’s say you’ve got some large rolls of paper being sold. There are 3 different sizes of the same paper. The 32″ is $365.95, the 40″ is $411.30, and the 48″ is $486.73. If you aren’t that familiar with configurable products, you have to set a price for the configurable product, then if any of the options have a higher price, you have to figure out the math and add the difference. So, in this situation, if I set my configurable product to $365.95, I would have to mark the 40″ as $45.35. So, the pull down would say something like ’42″ (+45.35)’. I wouldn’t know the true price until I selected the 42″. And, if the price ever changes for any of these different sizes, I have to do the math every time and I can only update the prices through the configurable product. The prices for the simple products have no effect for a configurable product. Understand the issue here?
So – there’s a better option, namely, grouped products. Grouped products do act differently, but once you figure them out, I really like using them for situations like this. Grouped products are mainly meant to “group” different products together. Magento’s example is if you are buying a men’s suit. You’ll need a jacket, pants, button-down, tie, etc. You can group all those together. This is beneficial because you can not only sell a single button-down shirt individually, but you can also sell that same shirt (same SKU) in a suit set and still maintain the SKU, price, etc. just with one simple product.
In our situation though – we can conform our grouped product to have basically the same “product” in a sense, but just different sizes. So, we can make our simple products for the 32″, 40″, and 48″ rolls of paper, set them all to have visibility of “nowhere”, and associate them with our grouped product, and then you’ve got a “single” product with 3 different sizes of paper with a nice display of how much the different sizes cost. So – if the price changes for the 48″, simple change the price for the 48″ simple product and the grouped product shows the new price.
So, if you’ve been frustrated with configurable products that have different or odd price differences, consider trying a grouped product.
I am using configurable products the way you described grouped products. But my prices don’t change, so I don’t have that problem. The products are shoes and all the information is in the configurable except for the size, which is carried in the simple product and is reused for all the shoes.
One problem I ran into recently is the parent vs. the child SKU. In Magento 1.1.3, buying a configurable product resulted in the parent SKU showing on the order (the cart and the order also showed the child SKU, but the main SKU was the parent). That worked great for my setup, but some people called it a bug, so in 1.1.6 they changed it to result in the child SKU. Now my bestseller list shows sizes! (child SKUs) There is an admin option to choose which image to use in the cart (Parent or Child), but they didn’t add an option for which SKU to use.
The point is to be careful how you advocate setting up products, because we all decide to do it differently and what works today might change tomorrow.
“buying a configurable product resulted in the parent SKU showing on the order (the cart and the order also showed the child SKU, but the main SKU was the parent). That worked great for my setup, but some people called it a bug, so in 1.1.6 they changed it to result in the child SKU.”
IMO the change above was an absolute necessity in case the shop at some point needs to be integrated with the company ERP system – eg. to sync items in stock and decrease manual labor of doing orders.
This evidently has a lot to do with the catalogue – my postulate is in regards to product variations is signified by attributes – and that each child need a distinct SKU to be synched properly to the ERP system – according to the existing ERP database /SKU structure
Absolutely,
In your case, grouped product is the solution. It would be a little tricky if a grouped product would have simple products with custom options.
The most important thing with Magento is to understand how each product type works. Simple, grouped, bundled, configurable, downloadable. Sometimes the solution to a complex variations can be found by combination of those types.
And sometimes a merchant just need to call a developer
Here is a tough question. I need to group products as in the example above with the paper. However, my products are customized (monogrammed) and the customer needs to fill in “custom options”. Configurable and simple products offer the ability to create ‘custom options’, but the grouped product type does not. I have created them for the associated simple products. Does anyone know how to get them to show up?
Great work..
Thanks,
akiles
Hi, I’ve been reading your posts and I was wondering what would you say about a good way to configure these products I have:
my client sells English Courses. Each course has weeks of duration so a course can last 1 week, 2 weeks, 3 weeks and so on and each of them has their price. How should I configure this into magento ? a different SKU by Course – duration weeks combination as simple products and 1 main Configurable one ? The Course also have different start date depending on duration.
The problem I run into is: how to configure this into magento and how to speed up the data entry time.
Thanks.
Alduro,
I think you’ll just have to play around with it, but yes, that is where I would start. Configurable product based on course duration. It should be pretty simple. Create your attribute for course duration (making sure it is a dropdown, and can be used to create a configurable product). Then create your configurable product, and then use that to create your simple products (on the Associated Products tab on the bottom left).
Thanks Josh for your quick answer.
I think I will create an admin module in order to build one or more simple screen for loading Courses. My client can do data entry for 20 or 30 schools following magento’s way but behind that it is not scalable.That is what my client is looking for.
You said that you were able to get your configurable to add the extra cost per option. How did you do that? Were you making the various sizes options with custom options or did you find a way to make it add to the prices of the simple products. Right now I am trying to get an increase of $2 on one of my simple products associated to a configurable product without having to make it a grouped product. If you could tell me how you did that with your configurable product in your example I’d really appreciate it!
Thanks!
“And sometimes a merchant just need to call a developer”
Word!
Hi,
I am hoping someone might be able to steer me in the right direction. I am creating a music store using Magento where I am offering albums as mp3 downloads. I wish to be able to offer the user the option of either downloading a single zip file containing the all of the mp3 files from a particular album or to be able to download each track individually – much like the experience on iTunes.
I seem to have come unstuck when I create a new downloadable product (the album), add the products (.zip files containing either one or all mp3′s from each album) and then set the product as “Links can be purchased separately – YES”. It all works fine except for the way the final prices are calculated. I want the price of the entire mp3 album to be displayed in the list view but only the actual price of items added to be to the cart. What currently happens when a user adds any of the items to the cart the cost of the entire album (in all cases $21.23) is added plus the cost of the actual track … sorry if this sounds confusing. The site is currently online and configured as I have just described – it might make more sense if viewed: http://www.lifestylemusic.net
I think I am on the right track with assuming that grouping downloadable products together might be the way to go but I am struggling to get my head around how to configure it. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Thank you!
Does anybody know how to set custom options with magento API?
Thanks for this post Josh.
This is exactly the info I was looking for.
I have an odd question all the products on my site are set up as configurable with options such as size and colour which are populated with simple products. but what I am really trying to do is to group two or more configurable products together. Any help here would be great as its a real mind puzzle
Richard,
Unfortunately at this point with Magento, it can’t be done. You can only group simple products.
I’m using a bundled product type which is good apart from the lack of quantity fields attached to the checkboxes. I’m hoping this will do the trick: http://www.magentocommerce.com/boards/viewthread/33997/
Thought it might be of use to some of you.
@Richard – It actually can be done. Elias Interactive created a sweet module that enables this functionality: http://store.eliasinteractive.com/configurable-bundle-module.html
We’ve implemented their module with some modifications on a site we manage. It pulls in product photos for each of the products. Here is a screenshot of the customization: http://classyllama.com/wp-content/uploads/skitch/Configurable_Bundle-20100429-223450.png If you want the code to implement the image gallery for each product, ask Elias for the code as I shared it with them.
Hope that helps!