Many merchants sell customised design on various products or same product with various size or colour.
Connected Inventory could support using bundle or grouping, no matter your customised design is licensed need inventory tracking or not.
Customised Design need inventory control (Bundle Set)
If you need to keep track both customised design and product inventory, bundle set can support to calculate the product with customised design inventory for you according to components inventory. Article How Connected Inventory calculates Bundle Master's Product Inventory? What is the Logic (Mathematics)? explains the calculation logic.
For merchant who sells customised graphic (limited inventory) and print on T shirt with various size and colour, bundle set can support.
Let's say there is a Shopify store selling two custom designs ( A dog graphics or A cat graphics). The designs can be printed on either a Black T-Shirt or a Blue T-Shirt.
Marchant needs to manage the graphics and T shirt inventory; while Connected Inventory will auto calculate the bundle inventory(T-shirt with design) for merchant every 10 minutes.
Step 1: Create all components in Shopify for Inventory Tracking Purpose
1) Customised Design: Usually 2 customised design will be created on Shopify.
2) T-Shirt: Usually T- Shirt will be created on Shopify with size and colour option. Main purpose is for inventory tracking and hidden from the store but merchant can also sell T-shirt individually,
Step 2: Create Bundle product(Bundle Master) on Shopify.
Usually 2 separate products will be created on Shopify with options size and colour same as Step 1.1.
Step 3: Create Bundle group in Connected Inventory
1) Select the bundle set and set as bundle master.
2) Select the required components for the bundle set.
3) Update Item (per bundle)if required.
4) Update the bundle name and click SAVE
Article How to Create Bundles and Sets? shows the detailed steps to create the bundle.
Step 4: Update components inventory and check auto calculation.
Merchant can update components inventory upon creating the products in Shopify. They can also click EDIT INVENTORY to update all components inventory in bulk editor.
Bundle master inventory will be updated by Connect Inventory 10minutes later after creation of bundle set with component inventory update from 0 to 10.
Customised Design T -Shirt need inventory control on T-Shirt ONLY (Grouping)
Inventory Grouping could support too, if you need to focus on T-Shirt inventory ONLY. This is because the T-Shirt in Dog Design or Cat Design actually share the same base inventory (T-Shirt).
There are two ways to do this: 1) Manual Connected Groups; 2) Smart Connected Groups by SKU.
**Manual Connected Groups** allows you to hand pick which product or variants to put into a connected group to share the same base inventory.
**Smart Connected Groups** **by SKU** will let the app automatically create these connected groups for you for each unique SKU number; and putting each product / variant with a matching SKU into a group.
You need to create all products (Variants) no matter which inventory group you are using. Usually 2 separate products will be created on Shopify with options size and colour.
In this example, we will have to create two Inventory Group:
Black T-Shirt using Smart Connected Group
Step 1: Assign SKU Number for each variants for product using Black T-Shirt.
BLACK-T-SHIRT- SMALL
BLACK-T-SHIRT- LARGE
Step 2: Open the Connected Inventory app.
At sidebar menu, go to
Smart Connected Group by SKUClick
Enablebutton if this is the first time your store is using this feature. Once clicked, the app will automatically create connected groups based on each unique SKU number you have at your store.Click
Rescanif this is not the first time your store us using this feature AFTER the SKU number update in Shopify,When its done, you will find two groups created:
Step 3: Update all variants under the same grouping with same starting inventory.
Click the Edit Inventory Button and make sure all the products under the BLACK-T-SHIRT group with starting inventory in bulk editor.
Whenever your customer make a purchase on one of the design that contains the Black T Shirt, all the available quantity of all other designs that prints on the Black T Shirt will be automatically reduced. When there is a refund, the app will reverse and increase the quantity.
Blue T-Shirt using Manual Connected Group
Step 1: Open the Connected Inventory app.
At sidebar menu, go to
Manual Connected GroupClick
Enablebutton if this is the first time your store is using this feature.Click
Create a new Manual Groupbutton.
Step 2: Selection of variants
Select product or variants to put into a connected group to share the same base inventory. Enter an Inventory Group name.
This name is not visible to your customers. It just helps you to easily identify what the Inventory Group is created for what purpose.
Finally, click the
Savebutton. A new Inventory Group has just been created.
Step 3: Update all variants under the same grouping with same starting inventory.
Click the Edit Inventory Button and make sure all the products under the BLUE-T-SHIRT group with starting inventory in bulk editor.
Whenever your customer make a purchase on one of the design that contains the Blue T Shirt, all the available quantity of all other designs that prints on the Blue T Shirt will be automatically reduced. When there is a refund, the app will reverse and increase the quantity.