Knowledgebase: Product Options

Why would I need to use "Advanced Options" for my products?

 

In some situations, your product's properties may change considerably when certain options are selected. In other cases, you may have a limited amount of product with a particular option available and you need to control/track inventory on the product with that option.

  • Example 1:
    Let's say you have a shirt with a color option. One of the colors you offer is red, but your distributor only sent you 5 on the last shipment instead of the normal 20. You need to track the inventory for this specific color in order to avoid overselling the item.
  • Example 2:
    Let's say you have a high-end video camera with lens options available. One of the lenses is a special telephoto lens that weighs an additional 2lbs. You need to specify this for shipping purposes to calculate the correct shipping costs.

Advanced Options will help address these types of issues by allowing you to configure unique data for each option.

Essentially, when a product has options assigned to it, the options are merely labels that are selected on the base product. Whereas when advanced options are enabled, the product and its applicable option are considered individual items and treated as such in the store.


To enable your Advanced Options

  1. Go to Products >Product List
  2. Find the product you'd like to like to enable Advanced Options for and click on its name
    (or look to the far right of the product and click on its "Action >Edit" button)

Note:
That the product must first have options specified on it before you can use Advanced Options. Furthermore, the option types must be Dropdown, Radio or Drop Image. For information on setting options, please review our knowledge base article regarding options.

  1. Click on the "Options" tab to view your options.
  2. Next, look towards the top right of the options page and click the "Actions" drop down button
  3. Then click the "Advanced Options".

Tip:
Advanced options will create a listing for each possible product and option combination. For example, if you have a shirt available in 3 colors and 3 sizes, Advanced options will show 9 different headings. Therefore, you may need to be aware of how many option sets your product uses to avoid having too many advanced options to choose from.

Your Shift4Shop store can safely support up to 200 advanced options per product. We suggest keeping the number of variations to below 200.

To specify changes for a particular Advanced Option, click on its respective "Enable" box to make it active. From there, you can edit the fields available in the page.

Here are the individual data fields that can be configured for each product Advanced Option:

  • Code:
    This replaces the SKU and option part number and essentially allows you to make the Product/Option it's own "Product."

Important
If you plan on using Waiting Lists, you are required to fill in a Code for it to display if a particular option combination is out of stock.

  • GTIN:
    This field will be used for the product's Global Trade Item Number used for various product search feeds
  • Stock:
    This field will allow you to specify the inventory on this particular option.
  • Weight:
    This field will add to the weight specified in the Information Tab of the product. Using our camera example above, if the camera itself is 8lbs and the lens is 2lbs, you would specify the additional 2lbs in this field and the product (with this option) would weigh 10lbs altogether.
  • Cost:
    This field will replace the Cost listed in the Information Tab of the Product

Note
The Stock field for Advanced Options only supports numeric characters and can take a maximum of nine digits. By entering a number that is longer than this value, it will return an alert informing you of this.

At the farthest right of the Advanced Option, you will also see a + icon. Click this icon to expand these additional Advanced Option parameters:

  • Dimensions
    The length, width and height dimensions of the product when a particular advanced option is selected.
  • Custom Points
    If using Reward Points for your store, this parameter allows you to award custom reward points for the product when the advanced option is selected.

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