All about bundles

Last updated December 16th at 2:17pm

About this article

Bundles can be used to put individual products together and sell them as a distinct product. In this article you will learn what the term ‘Bundle’ means, what the different types of bundles are, and some extra details about the way bundles are handled in Centra.

What are bundles?

‘Bundles’ is a feature in Centra that lets you bring products together (a set) in a non-physical manner. This essentially allows you to sell products together as a set. Examples include bikinis that have a top and bottom piece, suits with sets of jacket and trousers, or even different combinations of your products that you wish to sell with a specified price. Below we explain the different types of bundles in Centra.

Bundle types

In Centra there are two different types of bundles: Flexible and Fixed. You can read detailed descriptions for Flexible and Fixed bundles in their respective articles, and below we detail a few different examples and use cases:

Fixed bundles

Fixed bundles can be used for products with the same size chart or with ‘One size’ size charts. Examples:

• Fixed bundle A - A one-sized scarf together with a T-shirt that comes in multiple sizes - Small, Medium, Large. Select the S/M/L size chart, and you can continue to add in the one-size scarf.
• Fixed bundle B - A one-sized scarf and a one-sized hat, both products with a single size, using the same size chart - One Size.
• Fixed bundle C - A two-piece bikini (top and bottom) that uses a size chart with multiple size options. Here they use the same size charts and the same sizes within the size chart - XSmall, Small, Medium, Large, XLarge. However, only one single size can be selected by the customer, so they get both top and bottom in the same size that they select.
• Fixed bundle D - A bundle of three T-shirts that have different prints and the same size chart with multiple size options - Small, Medium, Large. Your customer selects the size once and gets all three T-shirts in the same size.
• Fixed bundle E - A 2-seater sofa with four legs. They use the same, one size chart, but the legs are sold in a 2-pack.

Flexible bundles

Flexible bundles, on the other hand, are meant for multiple products with different size charts where you can select the quantity from many different variants, so your customers can mix and match. Examples:

• Flexible bundle A: Consists of bikinis sold in sets (referred to in Centra as bundles), each including one top and one bottom. Both the tops and bottoms have multiple size options and may use different or multidimensional size charts. For example, the top comes in a B, C, or D-cup, and the bottom trousers come in sizes Small, Medium, and Large. Also, both tops and bottoms come in different colors and patterns like dotted, striped, a plain color, or printed flowers. In this case, you set up the bundle so that the customer needs to pick one of each - top and bottom - to buy a bundled product at a specific price. This makes it possible to select a dotted top in size C with striped trousers in size Small.
• Flexible bundle B: This example showcases bundles containing men's suits, with jackets and trousers together in a packaged price, where the jacket comes in one size chart (44-54), and the trousers comes in a two-dimensional size chart where you pick the length Short, Normal, or Long (or 28-36) and the waist size between 24-38. With the different sizes you can also have different variations like colors and fabric. Here the customer has a wide range of options to select in order to create the bundle at a static, fixed price as they buy the whole suit and not the two pieces separately, which would have given another price.

Differences between Fixed and Flexible bundles

Differences between Fixed and Flexible bundles include the following:

• Size chart restriction - Fixed bundles require you to select a size chart. So, you are restricted to products that use the same size, or a size chart with multiple sizes combined with one-size products.
• Variants per section - Fixed bundles allow you to add only one variant in each section in the ‘Bundle definition’ part. In Flexible bundles you can choose multiple variants within a section, enabling your customer to decide which option they’d like to check out with. More details about this section can be found in each respective article explaining the Fixed and Flexible bundles setup.

All in all, this means that if you want to sell product A, which comes in variations of blue, red, green and product B, which comes in variations of creme, brown, and black, and you wish to give your customer the option of choosing the color variant, you can achieve this by:

• Creating one Flexible bundle with a section per product and all color variants within.
• Creating nine Fixed bundles with the different color combinations, since only 1 variant can be chosen per section.

Price types

There are two ways of handling pricing on bundles: static and dynamic. This is controlled through the ‘Price type’ setting in the ‘Bundle definition’ section of a Bundle. ‘Static’ allows you to define the price of the bundle manually. ‘Dynamic’ displays the price automatically through a price range taken from the selected products. You can read more about this setting in the Flexible and Fixed bundles articles.

General information about bundles and how they are handled in Centra

General configuration

• Bundles do not have variants. However, on display level there is a virtual variant that needs to be activated for the bundle to be visible on your website.
• If you wish to sell a product as part of a bundle only, it has to be fully configured as an individual product. This means that the product and variant statuses of this variant should be set to Active, and that the variant is dragged from the ‘Available’ to the ‘Activated’ part in the ‘Variants’ section of the display. However, the display status of this containing product can be inactive so that it is not sold as an individual product.
• Product displays with multiple activated variants will not work with bundles.
• You can upload media on the bundle itself to showcase specific images. Remember to also activate the media in the Bundle displays - this is similar to the process for regular products discussed here. In DTC, your frontend partner can fetch the containing products' media, and in this case you don’t need to upload images to the bundle. However, note that this is not possible for B2B and the Digital Showroom.

Discounts

• Both types of bundles can be added to vouchers and campaigns in the same way as a normal product. The total savings from buying a bundle are saved separately, and the discount field is used to show how much discount was applied to the bundle.

  Bundles with dynamic pricing cannot have a fixed price set by a campaign. They will only work with a percentage discount by design.

Orders, order flow, and documents

• In the ‘Ordered products’ section of an order, you can see the bundle. By clicking ‘View’ under ‘Tools’ you can also see the products contained in the bundle.
• It is possible to cancel and expedite the whole bundle only, without the possibility to separately expedite the products contained in the bundle
• The default option for returns is to return the whole bundle, but if needed, you can also separate it into products contained in the bundle by clicking on ‘Tools’ > ‘Divide bundle’. This will allow you to make a return or exchange the products contained in the bundle separately. However, once this action is performed, it is not possible to turn it back into a bundle. All documents and reports will still show the bundle on the order.
• To display products contained in the bundle on documents, use the setting ‘Truncate bundle’ in the document template.

Stock

• Stock can only be set on products contained in the bundle and calculated automatically on the bundle itself. If one of products contained in the bundle is out of stock, then the bundle itself is out stock too
• There is no way to set a bundle on preorder from the bundle settings. Instead, to set a bundle on preorder, all its products contained in the bundle should be set on preorder. Otherwise, if, for example, only one product contained in the bundle is on preorder in the bundle, the bundle is not sold on preorder.

Reports

• The following reports include bundle-specific information:
  • Sales: Transaction
  • COGS: Invoice
  • Invoiced: Per product

More specifically, the following columns can be used to segment your sales in a smart way:

• Bundle Attribute - Shows the value of the bundle or products contained in the bundle
• Bundle SKU - Displays the SKU of the bundle that the product contained in the bundle belongs to

This helps with sorting all products and bundles under one SKU. The prices are distributed to the containing items only, and the bundle price in the report remains 0. In the ‘Sales:Transaction’ report, the column for ‘Bundle original price’ can be used for products that have a campaign discount. The bundle row will be set to 0 in the Product original price.

APIs

If you're using the SOAP API, the price of the bundle will be distributed into the products contained in the bundle. The bundle price is always 0.