Who Is This For?
Retail merchants who sell one product in several colours or sizes and need a separate stock count, price and cost for each one.
Overview
A variant is one sellable version of a product, such as a T-shirt in Red, and each variant is its own SKU with its own stock count.
This guide shows you how to add colours or sizes as variants, set each variant's stock, price, cost and SKU, and remove a variant you added by mistake.
Modifiers are different: they are add-ons customers pick when they order, such as Iced for a coffee. See How to Set Up Product Modifiers for those.
Before You Begin
Access to BackOffice.
Stock tracking on the product, because you must tick 'Track stock level' to use variants.
A 'Simple' or 'Serialized' inventory type, because variants can only be used with those two.
Step-by-Step Guide
Set Up Colours and Sizes as Variants
In your BackOffice, go to 'Products'.
Click '+ Add Product' to create a new product, or select an existing product to edit.
Enter the product name, pricing, and other details.
Scroll down to the 'Inventory & Variants' section and tick 'Track stock level' and 'Has Variants'.
Under 'Variants', click 'Add Group'.
In 'Group Name', type the kind of choice, such as Colour.
In 'Option Name', type one colour, such as Red, then click 'Add another Option' and type the next colour in the new box.
Click 'Save' at the bottom of the page.
Put only one colour in each 'Option Name' box, because BackOffice saves each box as one option, so a box listing several colours becomes a single option.
With one group, each option becomes one variant. With two groups, such as Colour and Size, each combination of options becomes one variant.
After you click 'Save', the variants are listed in a table at the bottom of the product page, each named after the main product with its options in brackets, such as T-shirt(Red). Before you save, that space shows 'Save to Modify Product Quantity, Barcodes, Components or Serial Numbers' instead, so the table is not there yet.
Set Each Variant's Stock, Price, Cost and SKU
Enter each variant's stock in its 'Quantity' column, store by store if you have more than one store, then click a variant's name to set its own 'Price', 'Cost' and 'SKU', because the main product's price is greyed out.
A new variant starts with the main product's 'Cost' and, if the main product has a 'SKU', that SKU followed by a hyphen and the option, but later edits to the main product's price, cost or SKU do not change variants that already exist.
Once a product has variants, the main product's price is locked in BackOffice, so change it with a product CSV instead. You can also upload products with variants in bulk using the CSV import template. See How to Manage Products in Bulk and Export to CSV for both.
Variants or modifiers?
Leave 'Has Modifiers' unticked for colours and sizes: modifier options are add-ons picked at ordering time, with no stock of their own.
Remove a Variant You Added by Mistake
A saved option name cannot be edited. To remove a variant, click 'Delete' on its option row, then click 'Save', and BackOffice removes the variant products that no longer match. To fix a misspelt option, add the option again with the right name, delete the old one, then click 'Save'.
Each variant group needs at least one option, so if the wrong option is the only one in its group, add the right option before you delete the wrong one.
Need Help?
Contact StoreHub Support via live chat in your StoreHub app or email [email protected].