You can configure product bundles in Pipe17, so that a single SKU from your selling channel actually maps to one or more other SKUs, or "components". This can be used for simple SKU mapping as well as a real bundle such as a BOGO offer.
In this article
Overview
Bundles are useful when you have one or more products that are sold as a set.
For example:
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You want to offer your customers a "Beard Care Set" product on Shopify, that includes 3 products: a beard oil, balm, and brush. Shopify isn't able to bundle these products into one, so your customers would have to add each individual component to their cart! Instead, you can just set up the SKU BEARD-CARE-SET on Shopify and describe what it contains to your customers. In Pipe17, configure BEARD-CARE-SET as a bundle, containing 1 x BEARD-OIL, 1 x BEARD-BALM, and 1 x BEARD-BRUSH. Now, whenever Pipe17 sees the SKU BEARD-CARE-SET in one of your orders, we will "translate" it into the actual 3 SKUs that need to be shipped before sending it to your 3PL. |
Bundles can also be useful if you need to "map" one SKU to another. For example, if your selling channel has the SKU BEARD-OIL but your 3PL expects the SKU 0001234_BEARD-OIL, you can create a bundle where the only component is your 3PL SKU. This way, Pipe17 will only send the component (or, the "mapped" SKU) for fulfillment.
Create a bundle
- Click on Products on the left hand navigation menu of Pipe17.
- Navigate through the page or use the search to find the product that needs to be turned into a bundle. Click on the product to go to the product detail page.
- If you see a button labeled "Edit Bundle" on the upper right, that means this product is already a bundle. You can verify the bundle items (components) in the table at the bottom of the page, and edit them if necessary.
- If you see a button labeled "Add Bundle", then you can click that to define the bundle components. Simply add all the SKUs that should be contained in this bundle, and save the page.
Now, if an order comes in for this bundle, you will notice that the shipping request to your 3PL shows only the component SKUs.
| Sometimes, you might actually want your 3PL to receive the bundle SKUs. Maybe you use two fulfillment centers, and one of them is able to bundle your items for you, but the other one is not. If you want one or all of your fulfillment locations to receive bundle SKUs rather than component SKUs, you can set that location to "Preserve bundles" under Inventory > Locations in Pipe17. |
Import bundles
If you need to create a lot of bundles at once, you may find it useful to upload them via CSV follow the steps in this guide: Import Products Via CSV
Bundle Orders
If you have a fulfillment channel that doesn’t understand bundle orders, we can send a shipping request with the component items it knows how to fulfill.
First please ensure that "Preserve Bundles" is unchecked for that Pipe17 location.
If a Shipping Request is about to be created for a location that does not Preserve Bundles, Pipe17 will first transform (explode) the bundle line item into the component line items and update the line item quantities based on the bundle definition in the Pipe17 product. Note the technical definition of the Shipping Request accessible via the API has both the bundle SKU and the component SKUs.
When the fulfillment comes back from the 3PL with the component SKUs, Pipe17 will “recompose” the line items back into the bundle to send the shipment confirmation to the selling channel.
Bundle inventory
Bundle inventory is calculated based on the inventory of the components within the bundle. Here's an example using the same scenario from above:
| If bundle SKU BEARD-CARE-SET contains 1 x BEARD-OIL, 1 x BEARD-BALM, and 1 x BEARD-BRUSH, the total inventory of BEARD-CARE-SET is limited to the lowest available inventory of the 3 component SKUs. So if BEARD-OIL has 50 available, BEARD-BALM has 100 available, and BEARD-BRUSH has 4 available, the total stock of BEARD-CARE-SET bundles you can sell is 4. |
Troubleshooting bundle inventory
If your bundle inventory doesn't match the inventory of its components, you may need to manually trigger the bundle to re-calculate. You can do so by following these steps:
- Find the bundle in question under the Products tab of Pipe17
- Scroll down to the "Bundled Items" section and copy the SKU of one of the components (it can be any one of them)
- Now, head into the Inventory page of Pipe17 and search for your copied component SKU
- Click on the SKU in the list of results
- Click on the "edit" icon above the on hand inventory category, then click on the "save" icon that appears, without making any changes. This mimics an inventory change to this SKU.
- Now, if you go back to the Inventory page and search for the SKU of your bundle, you should see it has calculated inventory correctly.
- You can now head back to the page for the component SKU inventory and undo your change.