A Kit bundles two or more existing items together and sells them as one listing — for example, a gift set or a "buy more, save more" multipack. A kit doesn't carry its own stock; Acenda works out how many you can sell from the stock of the items inside it.
Before you start: Kits are an opt-in feature. If you don't see kit as a Group option, or no Kit Component import type when creating an import, contact Acenda Support to have kits turned on for your account.
How a kit fits into Group
Every item has a Group of variant, product, or kit. A kit is its own Group value — it isn't a special case of variant, and it isn't automatically linked to the items inside it by a shared parent SKU. What makes a kit a kit is its own list of components, set up separately on the Kit Configuration tab (Step 2 below).
A kit can still have a parent, the same way a variant can — for example, if you sell a bundle in a few sizes and want them to show together on one product page. That parent assignment is optional and separate from which items are inside the bundle. For the full picture of Group, parents and variants, see How to Use the Group Attribute to Set Products and Variants.
Component rule: Every item inside a kit must itself be Group variant — a single sellable item. You can't put a product (group) or another kit inside a kit.
Step 1: Create the kit item and its components
Before you can build a kit, every SKU involved must already exist in Acenda.
Create (or import) each component as a standard item with Group set to variant, with its own barcode, price and inventory.
Create (or import) the kit SKU itself with Group set to kit.
To create items one at a time, see Creating New Products Using the Admin Panel. To set Group in a bulk catalog import, use the group column (enter kit for the bundle SKU and variant for each component); only add group_skus.0 if you're also assigning a parent product — see How to Use the Group Attribute to Set Products and Variants for the full column reference.
Step 2: Link components to the kit
Once every SKU exists, choose the kit's components one of two ways.
Option A — on the kit's own item page:
In the sidebar, under CATALOG, click Items, then click the view (eye) icon on the kit's row.
Open the Kit Configuration tab.
Click + Add Component, choose the component by SKU, and enter a Quantity — how many of that component one kit needs.
Click Save. Repeat for each component.
Option B — Kit Component import (for many kits at once):
In the sidebar, under DATA TRANSFERS, click Imports, then click + New Import.
Choose Kit Component as the import type, and download the Kit Component Template from the same screen.
Fill in
kit_sku,sku(the component) andquantityfor each row, upload the file, then map and finalize the import.
Recurring Imports don't offer a Kit Component type — only the one-time Import flow above does, so a scheduled catalog feed can't add or update kit components on its own.
Example: "Shirt & Hat" bundle
kit_sku | sku (component) | quantity |
SHIRT-HAT-COMBO-01 | SHIRT-BLUE-LG | 1 |
SHIRT-HAT-COMBO-01 | TRUCKER-HAT-01 | 1 |
File format
Acenda accepts .csv or .xlsx for both imports above. .xls and .xlsm files are not supported and will return an "unsupported file type" error. If your workbook has more than one tab, only the first tab is read. Save a CSV as UTF-8 — a different encoding can import with garbled characters instead of an error. See How do I save my import file as a CSV in UTF-8 format? and Using the Import Feature: How to Import Product Data into Acenda.
Inventory comes from the components
Don't manually assign inventory to a kit — its stock is derived automatically and any kit's Inventory tab is view-only.
The math, per warehouse: for each component, Acenda takes what's on hand, divides by how many of it one kit needs, and rounds down. The kit's available quantity in that warehouse is the lowest of those results across all its components (the "bottleneck").
Example: if a warehouse has 50 shirts but only 5 hats, the "Shirt & Hat" combo shows an available quantity of 5 in that warehouse.
Updates quickly, not instantly: Acenda recalculates a kit's availability within moments of a component's stock changing. What actually reaches a marketplace follows that marketplace's own push schedule — for example Target+ pulls updated inventory about once an hour, Amazon about every 30 minutes.
Optional reserve: each component can also have an Inventory Floor — a quantity held back and never counted toward kit availability. It defaults to 0 and is set the same two ways as quantity (Kit Configuration tab or Kit Component import).
See How to Manually Adjust Inventory in Acenda for how component inventory itself is managed.
Marketplace rules
Unique barcode: Acenda requires every item's UPC/GTIN to be unique across your whole catalog, so a kit can't reuse a component's barcode — it needs its own. See Error FAQ: Duplicate Barcode at Target+ if you hit this on Target+.
Shipping weight and bundle images: several marketplaces expect a bundle's shipping weight to reflect everything inside it, and want images that show the full bundle contents rather than a single component. These are policies set by each marketplace, not something Acenda validates for you, and they change — check the current content requirements for each channel you list kits on.
Changing an item's Group later
A few Group changes are blocked to protect your data:
An item can't become a kit if it already has manually-entered inventory.
A kit can't change Group while it still has components — remove them on the Kit Configuration tab (or via a delete-enabled Kit Component import) first.
A variant can't change Group while it's a component of a kit — remove it from the kit first.
See How to Use the Group Attribute to Set Products and Variants for the full rules.
Troubleshooting
Kit Component import fails because a SKU doesn't exist: both the kit SKU and every component SKU must already exist in Acenda before you import components — complete Step 1 first.
Kit shows 0 available stock: open the kit's Kit Configuration tab and check each component's on-hand quantity and Inventory Floor — one component at zero (or below its floor) brings the whole kit to zero.
"Cannot change group to kit because manual inventory record(s) exist": clear the item's existing inventory first, then switch its Group to kit.
"Cannot change group for kit because it still has component(s)": remove all components on the Kit Configuration tab before changing the kit's Group.
"Cannot change group for variant because it belongs to kit component(s)": remove the item from the kit(s) that use it first.
No kit option, or no Kit Component import type: kits aren't turned on for your account yet. Contact Acenda Support to ask about kits.
A kit order looks like it routed or shipped wrong: orders are placed against the kit's own SKU, then expanded into its components for routing and fulfillment. Check each component's availability per warehouse rather than the kit's combined number.
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Still stuck? Contact Acenda Support and tell us the kit SKU and which component is involved.