Product kit improvements

Posts: 3
Joined: 01/15/2008

Product Kit Classes - Just had a brainfart relating to an issue I'm trying to find a solution too and assumed, since you could add product classes that you can add fields too in CCK, that you'd be able to do the same with Product kits... Well you can, but since there is no option of adding another product kit style, any extra CCK fields will be added to ALL product kits.

Product List Control - Instead of listing all products, it would be good if we could limit exactly which products could be added to a product kit. From an Ubercart perspective, I'd assume this could be done quite easily by limiting by product class, probably having a number of select lists rather than the current single one, and with each product kit class having the option of turning on/off a product class select list. From a flexibility perspective, some form of views integration here would be even better Smiling

Product Kit SKU - I haven't really played with reports or anything yet, but since product kits don't have SKU's, I'm assuming there is no way of telling what products were sold as part of a kit, and which were sold individually? By adding an SKU to the product kit, you would have a direct indication of this.

Product Kit Discount - Currently, the price of a product kit appears to be the total of the contained products, and any discount given by that product kit has to be applied to a product within it. If product kits were given their own SKU, that discount could be applied to the product kit itself. By doing this, when a product kit is sold, all contained products could be sold on their usual SKU's at their usual prices, and the "discount" can be charged to the product kits SKU, giving you a direct indication of how much that product kit, or promotion, is costing you, rather than devaluing the sold stock. Depending on local laws etc, this information could then be used for tax write offs etc since it now becomes an expense Eye-wink

I'll leave it that for now Smiling

Posts: 3744
Joined: 08/07/2007
AdministratorHead Code Monkey - I eat bugs.

Just wanted to say there are some great ideas and I appreciate the brainstorming. You probably won't see any movement on them while we're trying to roll out the 1.0, but I'm definitely sticking these in my "review these suggestions" folder in my bookmarks. Eye-wink

Posts: 27
Joined: 01/09/2008
Bug Finder

I'm creating a computer store selling computer systems. We need to be able to allow upgrade options for some parts in new systems (eg faster CPU or a bigger screen). Currently each computer package is a product (of its own class) with attributes defining upgrade options.

Using a product kit for a computer package where the kit was made up of individual computer components (cpu, ram, hdd, etc) could be really good if:

there was a way to create groups of products in the kit such that the store admin selects products that belong in a group (so there might be a group for CPUs and a group for screens). Then when the user is viewing the kit they can select a product for each group (similar to selecting attributes but it would actually change the product in the order).

This could also be done with product classes, so the admin could select classes that the kit contains (perhaps optionally disabling certain products in the selected class for the current kit like options can be disabled for individual products).

Perhaps there could also be a setting for a max and min number of products the user can select for each group/class and a default product for each group/class for the kit.

The product kit sell price might then be the sum of default products (minus discounts), but would change if different products were selected by the user (like attributes that have a default option with zero cost).

Perhaps it would be best (most convenient to store admin) to use the previously proposed product kit classes to define product groups/classes, allowing groups and/or individual products in groups to be disabled in instantiations of the product kit class.

Apart from neatness and clarity, one of the main advantages with this is that the kit price could update automatically whenever a contained product price was updated, instead of having to individually update an attribute option in each product (on a side note, maybe it would be good to have a button in the main edit attribute option page that updated the option price in all products that have that option enabled?)

Sounds like a lot of work... but I'm guessing this sort of thing would be extremely useful in a lot of situations other than computer packages. Smiling