Kits (sell several products as one)

A kit is a product that contains other products. A gift box with a bottle of wine and two glasses, a starter set, a bundle of three soaps. You sell it as one item at one price, and Brainerce works out the stock from what's inside.

There are three ways to price a kit: type the price yourself and it stays put, let the kit cost exactly what its contents cost, or let it cost the contents less a percentage you choose. The last two are recalculated every time the kit is shown, so a product inside going on sale changes the kit price on its own. See Pricing a kit below.

Kits are a product type, like Simple and Variable. A kit has its own product page, its own web address, its own photos and its own SEO, and customers can find it in search and in your categories.

Kits vs bundle offers vs discount rules

These three sound alike and do completely different jobs. Picking the wrong one is the most common mistake here.

A kit is the only one of the three that is a real product. A bundle offer and a discount rule are promotions on top of products you already sell. They have no product page, and customers can't search for them.

Creating a kit

1. Go to Products and click Add product.
2. Set the type to Kit.
3. Fill in the name, photos and description as you would for any product.
4. Type a price in Base Price. It's required before you can save, the same as for a simple product.
5. Save, then open the kit and add the products it contains.
6. While you're in the contents, pick how the kit is priced. Fixed price is the default and keeps the number you typed in step 4. If you pick one of the other two modes, the kit costs what its contents cost (optionally less a percentage), and the number you typed in Base Price is then ignored. See Pricing a kit.

A brand-new kit is empty, and an empty kit cannot be bought. It's saved and you can keep editing it, but customers can't add it to the basket until it has at least one product inside. Add the contents before you tell anyone about it.

Choosing what's inside

For each product you add to the kit, set how many of it the kit contains. A kit with two glasses has that glass with a quantity of 2.

If a product you're adding has variants (sizes, colours), you must pick which one the kit includes. A kit contains one specific bottle, not "a bottle in some size", because otherwise there'd be no way to know what to take off the shelf when one sells. If you want to offer a choice, make a separate kit for each option.

Whether swapping in a dearer item changes what the kit charges depends on how the kit is priced. On Fixed price, it doesn't: the kit goes on charging the number you typed, and you have to update it yourself. On the two contents-based modes, it does, straight away and with no action from you. Check which mode the kit is on before you change its contents. See Pricing a kit.

A kit cannot contain another kit. Add the individual products instead.

Pricing a kit: three ways

Open the kit's contents and pick how it should be priced. Fixed price is the default and is what most shops want.

Pick Fixed price when the kit is a product in its own right and its price is a decision rather than a calculation. A gift box you sell for a round number all season is the obvious case.

Pick one of the other two when the kit is a convenience wrapper around things you already sell, and you want it to stay honest as those prices move. The trade-off is that you no longer control the number directly: change a component's price and the kit price changes with it.

⛔ On the two contents-based modes, Base Price is ignored. The number in the kit's Base Price field is still required to save the product, but it is not what the kit sells for once you pick What the contents cost or Contents, less a discount. Editing it changes nothing a customer sees. A sale price on the kit itself is ignored on those modes too, because the discount is already expressed by the mode and applying both would take it off twice.

⛔ Watch out on Fixed price: the kit's price does not follow its contents. Put a bottle on sale, raise a price, swap one product for a dearer one, and the kit goes on charging exactly what you typed. Nothing warns you. If you want the kit to track its contents, that is what the other two modes are for.

Stock: kits don't have their own

A kit has no stock number of its own, and you can't type one. This is deliberate, and it's the part merchants ask about most.

Stock always comes from the contents. The price only does if you asked it to. The number of kits you can sell is worked out from what's inside no matter which pricing mode you picked, and you can never type it. The price is a separate choice: on Fixed price it stays the number you typed in Base Price, and on the other two modes it is worked out from the contents as well. See Pricing a kit.

How many kits you can sell is worked out from what's inside. If a gift box needs one bottle and two glasses, and you have 10 bottles and 6 glasses, you can sell 3 kits, because the glasses run out first.

That means:

• Selling a kit takes the contents off the shelf, not the kit.
• Selling a bottle on its own reduces how many kits you can sell.
• If any product inside runs out, the kit shows as out of stock, even if everything else is in stock.
• You'll see the same product's stock going down from two directions. That's correct, because there's only one shelf.

Tax on a kit

If the things inside a kit are taxed at different rates, the kit's price is split between them in proportion and each part is taxed at its own rate. A kit containing a zero-rated item and a standard-rated item is not taxed at one blended rate, and your tax report shows the correct amount under each rate.

Any tax class set on the kit product itself is not used when the kit sells. The contents decide the tax.

The contents' own prices are what decides the split: whatever the kit charges is divided between them in the same proportion as their own prices. Whether those prices also decide what the kit charges is a separate question, and it depends on the pricing mode. On Fixed price they don't, and the kit goes on charging the number you typed. On What the contents cost and Contents, less a discount they do. See Pricing a kit.

Refunds and returns

You can refund part of a kit. When you do, the products that came back go onto the shelf individually, and the kit doesn't reappear as a kit. If a customer keeps the wine and returns the glasses, you get the glasses back and the wine stays sold.

The order keeps a record of what each item inside the kit was charged, after any discount on the order, so you can see what a single item in the kit was worth rather than guessing from today's prices. You still type the refund amount yourself, as you do for any refund.

Check the amount if your prices include tax. The per-item figure recorded on the order is the price before tax when your store adds tax at checkout, so refunding exactly that figure gives the customer back less than they paid. Add the tax back on, or refund the whole line.

What kits don't do

Worth knowing before you plan around them:

• Customers can't build their own kit. You decide what's inside. There is no "pick any 3" box for shoppers.
• A kit can't contain another kit.
• A kit can't have variants. No "small gift box / large gift box" on one kit product. Make two kits instead.
• You can't type a stock number for a kit. It always comes from the contents, whichever pricing mode the kit is on.
• You can't set a price per contents slot. A component is included at its own selling price, and you can't override that price just for this kit. What you can do is pick a pricing mode: fixed, contents, or contents less a percentage. See Pricing a kit.
• You can't mix modes across one kit. One kit is priced one way, all of it.
• A kit's price doesn't follow a discount rule or a coupon on its contents. The contents-based modes follow a component's own price and sale price, not promotions that apply at the cart.
• Kits are not sent to Google or Meta shopping feeds. The products inside are sent as normal; the kit itself is not listed yet.
• A kit can't be added to a manual order you create in the dashboard yet. Add the individual products instead.

Changing a kit later

You can change what's inside a kit whenever you like. Changes affect future orders only. Orders already placed keep a record of exactly what was in the kit when it was bought, so refunds and picking lists stay correct even if you change the recipe afterwards.

Whether changing the contents changes the price depends on the pricing mode. Check the mode before you edit the recipe:

• Fixed price: it does not. Swapping a $10 item for a $30 one leaves the kit selling at the old price, and taking an item out doesn't make it any cheaper. Update the kit's Base Price in the same visit, otherwise the new recipe goes on selling at the price the old one had. The same is true when a component's own price changes without you touching the kit at all.
• What the contents cost and Contents, less a discount: it does, and immediately. Adding a $30 item raises the kit price by $30 the next time anyone loads the page, and there is nothing to update by hand. That is the point of those modes, but it does mean a careless edit reprices a live product, so change the recipe when you're happy for the price to move with it.

See Pricing a kit for how to check and change the mode.

You can't delete a product that's currently inside a kit. Take it out of the kit first, then delete it.

Switching a kit back to a simple product is only possible once you've removed everything inside it. A kit can't be turned into a variable product, or the other way round.