Variants, Composite Items, and... Configurable Items with Ad Ons?

Variants, Composite Items, and... Configurable Items with Ad Ons?

So I had to review a few of these concepts, and felt like there may need to be some clearer distinction made between the abstractions that we use to create associations between multiple items in inventory - sometimes with selections available to the customer, sometimes bundling multiple items into a single SKU, either because something's been manufactured or discounted at a bundled price, or simply for marketing purposes and how we'd like to group associated items on our product pages..

In this regard, I think there's a lot of room for confusion and that it may be helpful to others if I share my personal understanding of these concepts, and invite others to enhance or correct as necessary.

Hopefully this will help provide a better understanding as to how and when these features can or should be used in order to achieve both better inventory management and product presentation within your store.

As such, the following are how I've come to understand define the following concepts that can easily be confused.  These are - Item Variants, Composite Items, and Configurable Items / Add Ons (the last is not currently a Commerce feature, but one that I would propose should be, and is functionality within several other ecommerce systems.  More on that below...):

Variants
A Variant generally should be in item that comes prepackaged from a supplier, usually with its own dedicated UPC or SKUs. It's a variant because it may be conceptually grouped along-side with other very similar items with variations that pivot on one or more specific attributes. Some of these attributes might be size, color, flavor, etc. Each one of these attributes will multiply the number of SKUs by the number of new options within that attribute. (It's worth mentioning that you don't need to keep all of possible the variants SKUs if, for example, all colors are not being ordered for all sizes of a particular item - in which case the automatically generated SKUs can simply be deleted).

The inventory for any variant is increased when it's received and decreased when it's sold.  

Presentation at the point of sale is such that all variants are presented on a single product page.  Selecting the appropriate attribute options on a product page allows the customer to ultimately arrive at the specific product variant they wish to order.  

It's important to emphasize that selecting a variant on the product page is a "deductive" process during the point of sale, whereby each attribute option that is selected further hones in and reduces the number of remaining variants until the last attribute is selected.  This makes it much easier for your customer to quickly and specifically identify one variant among perhaps hundreds of other similar items without having to wade through pages of items.

Composite Items
A Composite Item is a pre-bundled "composite" of multiple SKUs. (Note the word "PRE-bundled"). This feature is really meant for those who bring in various pieces, parts, and components (which may or may not also be sold individually), but are assembled into AND presented as a single bigger product - hense the name "Composite Item".

As such, from a presentation standpoint, the Composite Item is a single SKU that you sell to your customer.  Behind the scenes, a composite item comprises of the pieces and parts initially received and inventoried as other SKUs.  The magic here is in the bundling.  Once bundled into a composite item, the inventory quantities are automatically reallocated reducing the on-hand counts all of those parts that are used to manufacture the Composite Items.

Composite Items are quite useful to you if you are a manufacturer in order to help you maintain and track your on-hand parts, make adjustments, and see if you're running short on this part or that for one product or another.

Generally, Composite Items are planned for in advance, and are usually bundled, allocated, and typically prepackaged well before the sale.

Composite Items are meant to define in your inventory a finished product from the parts that it's made from. This provides a means for automatic parts allocation for the purpose of assembling components into finished goods with the needed visibility and reporting that you otherwise would have to deal with manually in other painstaking ways (e.g. maintaining multiple inventories, one for manufacturing, and one for sales, etc.).

As such, the Composite Items feature allow manufacturers to have both the parts and the finished products coexist happily in one place and allocate the former into the latter as needed. It's inclusion into Inventory (and now into Commerce) has likely been a big deal for many, and a pretty significant accomplishment on Zoho's part.  Considering that that EDI can also available be integrated with Zoho Inventory, this is a pretty serious level of functionality for manufacturers that would otherwise be difficult to rival at Zoho's price point.
  
Configurable Items / Add Ons
There is however a third concept however, which I believe is very much desired, but is not yet included as part of Commerce, and oddly I think it's the arguably a feature that would probably be fairly east for the Commerce group to implement, being that it shouldn't be contingent on the changes to the Inventory Schema shared by the other Zoho apps.

I also think that it's something that is one of the more desired features, but not identified as such because it gets confused for and/or grouped in with certain other features when it's really quite a separate feature all together, for example... by that I mean that Variants and Composite Items are often being mistaken by users for what should really be considered as an entirely different and separate feature - that being the "Configurable Item with Add Ons".

The feature I'm describing here is used and implemented frequently on websites selling computers.  You sell the "bare-bones" system, which might be the enclosure and the motherboard, then you have a dropdown box to select what CPU, another dropdown box allows you to select the RAM, and another for the power supply.

It's important to understand that this is not a deductive selection (like it is with variants) in that each of the selections under each of these drop-downs is not honing down to a singular SKU.  Nor is it a Composite Item in which a single SKU is the composite of many that were preallocated into a final product.

Rather, this is an additive process at the point of sale, enabling the customer to configure their own system by selecting from multiple SKUs that are simply associated to a base "Configurable Item".  It's a function of presentation, and requires no preallocation of inventory.

It's important to understand that the base Configurable Item can be sold by itself, but is presented with optional "Add Ons".  When Add Ons are selected, pressing the "Add to Cart" button ads the base Configurable Item, along with the SKUs (and relevant Quantities, which should also be optionally presentable) of the other associated "Add On" items.

So in this way, there is never any sort of preallocation required for Add Ons within a Configurable Item.  It's only the relationship between the Configurable Item and its available Add Ons that needs to be established (e.g. perhaps within the Configurable Item's product page editor) that determines that such "Add Ons" be presented within the product page. 

Since this is only a function of presentation, the SKUs for the individual items (the base Configurable Item plus the Add On items) are still maintained within the cart, with no need to package them for the purpose of how they're seen from the perspective of the customer.

One other important distinction in this regard might be with respect to discounting.  Composite Items (not Configurable Items) can also be presented with package discounts.  Applying package discounts to Configurable Items might not be so straight forward if desired.

Anyhow, hopefully this will provide better understanding for those who are trying to strategize how to setup their inventory, and also serve as a proposed implementation that Zoho might consider in order to add in some sort of "Configurable Item / Add Ons" capability within the product page templates and be manageable on the back end via the product page editor.

This can theoretically be accomplished using custom fields and some modification to the Face product template files, but it would be nice if this functionality was part of Commerce itself without needing to hack it in.

Thanks,
Bryan

    • Recent Topics

    • Zoho Commerce - Mobile Application

      Does Zoho Commerce have a mobile application for customers to place an order?

    • Register user through Phone Number by Generating OTP

      In zoho commerce , I am developing website on online food store Inilialy the user get verification code to their email for registering there account for login. But I need to login using phone number by generating OTP automatically rather than verification

    • Custom Buttons for Mass Actions

      Hello everyone, We’ve just made Custom Buttons in Zoho Recruit even more powerful! You can now create Bulk Action Buttons that let you perform actions on multiple records at once, directly from the List View. What’s new? Until now, custom buttons were

    • Zoho Vault Passwords

      Is there a way to consume Zoho Vault Manager passwords using the API? Thanks in advance.

    • Is the ChatGPT Assistant integration capable of recognizing WhatsApp voice messages?

      I was wondering: if a visitor sends me a voice message on WhatsApp, would the assistant be able to transcribe it and reply to them?

    • Zoho Creator to Zoho CRM Images

      Right now, I am trying to setup a Notes form within Zoho Creator. This Notes will note the Note section under Accounts > Selected Account. Right now, I use Zoho Flow to push the notes and it works just fine, with text only. Images do not get sent (there

    • 【Zoho CRM】レポート機能のアップデート

      ユーザーの皆さま、こんにちは。コミュニティチームの藤澤です。 今回は「Zoho CRM アップデート情報」の中から、レポート機能のアップデートをご紹介します。 目次 1. レポートのエクスポート時のレコードIDの表示について 2. 通貨項目の表示について 3. レポートの削除の監査ログへの反映について 1. レポートのエクスポート時のレコードIDの表示について これまで、レポートをエクスポートするとファイルにレコードIDが必ず含まれていました。レコードIDが識別子として役立つ場合もありますが、実際には多くの企業で参照されることはありません。

    • Translation in zoho bookings

      We cant translate zoho booking emails. The general text we can change. But what about text like: ""Here a link to join the meeting online:"" and "Add to Zoho Calendar" and "Add to Google Calendar"? No professional business have mixed languages. Its looking

    • Is there any way to bill one client in different currencies on different invoices?

      I have some customers who have their currency set as USD and most of their billing is done in USD.   However, from time to time I have a need to bill them in my base currency GBP for some specific invoices, but there seems to be no way of doing this that I can see. The only workaround that I can see is to create two client records for the same client, one for USD billing and one for GBP billing, but this is not an ideal situation. Is it likely that the (hopefully!) soon to arrive multi-currency support

    • API name for all fields in Zoho Project (Standard or custom)

      Hi! I struggle to find easily all API name of all field in Zoho Project to build my API rest with other services. We can find them very fast in CRM but not in PRoject.   Could you share a function to get the list of all API Name of any field of an App

    • Disappearing Mouse cursor in Zoho Mail / Windows 11 (Chrome + Edge)

      I'm seeing an issue when writing mails with the light theme with the mouse cursor being white and the document area also being white - making it nearly impossible to see the mouse cursor. I see the problem on Windows 11 under Chrome and Edge. (Yet to

    • Zoho Assist not rendering NinjaTrader chart properly

      Hi everyone. Just installed and testing Zoho Assist. I want to display my laptop' screen (Windows 11) on a monitor connected to my Mac mini. The laptop is running a stock trading program called NinjaTrader. Basically, when running, this program displays

    • Link(s) between Notes

      Hello Everyone, It would be great if links could be created between notes. Let's say we have 5 Notes A, B, C , D, E. I would like to be able to link Note A to Note B but not in other way, so no link appears in Note B linking to Note A. An so on, linking

    • Feature Request: Assign Documents to Already Entered Bills, Expenses, Invoices, etc.

      Hi Zoho Team, We are regular users of the Documents module in Zoho Books and appreciate its ability to keep financial records well-organized. However, we’ve noticed a limitation: There is no way to attach a document from the "Documents > Files" section

    • I don't see any WITHDRAWL transaction at all

      Hi I manually imported my bank statement to Zoho books today and I am a complete newbie. I have been reading the knowledgebase but unable to fix this. I only see "Uncategorized 91 DEPOSIT transactions". I don't see any WITHDRAWL transaction at all. Also,

    • Shared inbox unable to see replies

      Hi we are a small company me and someone else, we have a shared inbox for our sale@ and contact@ however we have this issue where by if i reply to an email or the other person reply to the email, it does not show it to them and therefore we end up replying

    • 404 error at checkout

      Our customers are getting a 404 error at checkout. Anyone else with the same problem?

    • FONT Sizing in Notebook

      Hi Kishore - What is the status of adding font sizing to the application? I have several things that I have pasted directly into Notebook and the fonts are HUGE! I would like the ability to highlight them and reduce the font to a legible size. Nothing

    • Can managers Upload documents to their direct rapports?

      Admin employees have the ability to upload documents to employees' files; however, managers do not have add/manage button - is it possible for managers to upload their direct reports' documents, such as absence documents or 121 documents. Is there something

    • Leave balance display for next year

      Is there a way to not have a rollover or not limit the leave balance depending on the date. For example an employee has 10 days leave balance and wants to apply for January leave in December. They cant because the rollover doesnt show the leave balance

    • Please add an “Auto-Apply Unused Credits” toggle

      Hello — please add a simple org-level option to automatically apply unused credits (credit notes, excess payments, retainers) to new invoices and/or bills. An ON/OFF toggle with choices “invoices”, “bills”, or “both” would save lots of manual work for

    • Zoho Books not working/loading

      Hi! I haven't been able to access/load Zoho Books for the past hours. I get a time out (and it is not due to my internet connection). Could you please check this asap? Thank you!

    • Custom Fields with Data Types for Expense and Payments Received in Zoho Books

      Hi all, We are glad to present to you, the option to create Custom Fields for the Expense and Payments received modules in Zoho Books. This also comes with an icing on top of it - Yes, the custom fields can now be created with different data types. Types like Text, Number, Decimal, Amount, Auto Number and Check Box are supported as of now. Rush to the gear icon at the top right corner, select 'More Settings', choose 'Preferences' in the left pane. Click the Expense/Payment preferences where you can

    • Zoho Cliq - Incident alert (Server outage - IN DC) | August 28

      We've received server down alerts and are currently investigating the issue (IN DC) to find the root cause. Our team is actively working to restore normal operations at the earliest. Status: Under investigation Start time: 09:44:21 AM IST Affected location:

    • Claude + MCP Server + Zoho CRM Integration – AI-Powered Sales Automation

      Hello Zoho Community 👋 I’m excited to share a recent integration we’ve worked on at OfficehubTech: ✅ Claude + MCP Server + Zoho CRM This integration connects Zoho CRM with Claude AI through our custom MCP Server, enabling intelligent AI-driven responses

    • How can I see content of system generated mails from zBooks?

      System generated mails for offers or invices appear in the mail tab of the designated customer. How can I view the content? It also doesn't appear in zMail sent folder.

    • Limitations on editing a message in Cliq

      Hi I've checked the documentations and there's no mention of how many times a message can be edited. When trying with code, I get various numbers such as ~1000 edits or so. Please mention if there's a limit on how many times one can change a message via

    • Narrative 10: Assignment Rules - Streamlining Ticket Management

      Behind the scenes of a successful ticketing system: BTS Series Narrative 10: Assignment Rules - Streamlining Ticket Management In the complex world of customer support, a flood of incoming tickets can hit the help desk in seconds. Businesses must do more

    • Custom form - Duplicate Value Present

      I am new to Zoho People. I create a new form on Zoho People quite simple. A date (by default the current date) and a radio button with 3 options (Yes, No, Not applicable) I defined the date as ‘No duplicate’ as only one entry by date is allowed. I added:

    • Zoho API connection issues

      Hi, Today at around 1930 GMT our application started experiencing intermittent timeouts from the Zoho API. These intermittent timeouts are not enabling our app to work properly. The API connection was working just fine before. HTTPSConnectionPool(host='www.zohoapis.com',

    • Query Regarding our Partnership between AIC-JKLU and Zoho

      Dear Zoho Team, I am writing to raise a concern on behalf of AIC-JKLU, one of Zoho’s incubator partners. Recently, our startups have been facing difficulties while trying to get themselves onboarded on Zoho through our dedicated partner link. Unfortunately,

    • Disputed Purchase Invoices

      We have recently moved to Zoho Books from Sage. In Sage we were able to post a purchase/vendor invoice but mark it as on dispute. This would usually be a pricing query or if something was damaged. It would show in their ledger, so we could agree their

    • Getting events in the future

      Hi I am trying to get events in the future by calling this API Endpoint https://www.zohoapis.eu/crm/v8/Events?fields=Event_Title,Created_By,Created_Time,Start_DateTime But that gives me all events in the database. How do I make a query that returns all

    • Created Date/Invalid Fields

      Since Saturday we have suddenly had issues with our webhooks and data retrieval from CRM. Specifically how Created Date is handled. It appears there was some sort of change within CRM that broke a lot of our code that has been in place for several years.

    • Revenue Management: #9 Revenue Recognition in Media & Publishing

      Media & Publishing industry has evolved in recent times. It offers subscriptions, bundles digital and print access, runs sponsored content, and sometimes even sells ad spaces. If you run a media or publishing business, you will always get into a situation

    • Zoho CRM Community Digest - July 2025 | Part 2:

      Hello, Everyone! We’re closing out July with a can’t-miss highlight: Zoholics Europe 2025! Happening from September to October, it’s your chance to level up your CRM skills, covering everything from automation and CPQ to dashboards and advanced workflows.

    • How can I trigger a flow action only once while updating contact?

      Hi, we have a trigger to merge&mail file when the field YYY is filled out. For this acion I used "Create or update module entry". But unfortunately we get tens of email on a day with this merged file, because the contact is being regularly updated. The

    • Copy a Record Template from one Form to another

      I have a Creator application with several forms.  I developed a record template for one of the reports/forms but want to use most of it for another of the form/report combinations in the application. Is there a way to copy the template (code or otherwise) to another form?

    • Tip of the Week #70 – Create common team signatures for your shared inboxes

      Did you know that a small detail, such as an email signature, can make a big difference in how your brand is perceived? One simple yet smart way to enhance your team’s communication is by creating common team signatures for your shared inboxes. Instead

    • Enhanced data export features: XLSX format, custom character encoding, and selective record export

      Greetings all, Here are a few enhancements related to exporting CRM data, including the ability to export data in XLSX file format now. The Export feature under Data Administration now offers new options that expand its flexibility and enable users to

    • Next Page