How variations work here
One product holds the words that describe the thing - title, description, brand, category, pictures - and its variants hold everything that differs: the SKU, the price, the cost, the weight, the barcode and the stock. A product with no variations still has one variant underneath; the screen simply calls that block Price and stock instead of Variants.
Options are the axes: Size with values Small, Medium, Large; Colour with Red and Blue. A variant is one point on those axes and carries the values that name it: "Large / Blue". Up to five options are read from an import, which is more than any channel here accepts.
Adding a variant
- Open the product and find the Variants block.
- Press Add variant.
- Give it a SKU, and the option values that tell it apart from the others.
- Set the selling price, and the cost if you track margin. Both are in your reporting currency.
- Save. The variant is immediately part of every list, filter and channel push.
Remove deletes a variant and frees its SKU to be used again. A variant that has been sold keeps its order history whatever happens to the product.
Editing one
Edit on a variant opens it with five tabs.
| Tab | What is on it |
|---|---|
| Pricing | Selling price, cost price and RRP. The RRP is what the maker says it is worth and is shown beside your price where a channel supports it. |
| Stock | On hand, promised and available for this variant, and the place to correct a count. See Stock. |
| Measurements | Weight, and the length, width and height of the parcel rather than of the product: postage is priced on what you post. Shown in the units chosen under Settings, and read back in the same ones. |
| Identifiers | Barcodes and the manufacturer's part number. See below. |
| Images | Which of the product's pictures belong to this variant. Saving can also move a picture from another variant. |
Needs shipping is on by default and off for downloads, services and gift cards. A variant that needs no shipping is never picked and never asks for a weight.
Barcodes and part numbers
A variant can carry several codes - EAN, UPC, GTIN, ASIN - with one marked as primary. Every code is stored in one common form, so the same item scans whether it was entered as a UPC, an EAN or a GTIN.
The manufacturer part number is the maker's own reference. eBay accepts either a barcode, or a brand and this. Leave it empty for things that have no part number, most clothing included, and the channel is told so explicitly rather than left to guess.
Pictures per variant
Pictures belong to the product and are assigned to variants. A picture with no variant is a product-level picture and stands for all of them. On the Images tab of a variant, tick every picture that belongs to it; a shopper choosing Blue then sees the blue ones.
Every variation at once
On a product with many variants, tick them - or Select every variation - and the bar offers price, cost and weight, each of which can be set to a number, raised by a percentage or lowered by one. A percentage is worked out from each variant's own value, and a variant with no price is left alone rather than given one.
Prices and stock from the product list opens the same thing as a compact grid: every variation, its price and its stock in the warehouse you choose, edited in place and saved together.
What each channel does with them
| Channel | Its model |
|---|---|
| Shopify | Options and variants, the same shape as here. Up to three options. |
| WooCommerce | A variable product with attributes and variations. |
| Magento | A configurable product over simple ones, with an attribute per axis. The attribute has to be in the product's attribute set, which is the permission most easily missed when connecting. |
| eBay | A multi-variation listing: one listing, its variations grouped over the axes you chose. |
| Amazon | A parent ASIN owning child ASINs, where the variation theme is declared on the parent and the children inherit it. Each of your variants is one child, keyed on its SKU. |