Thread: Cases vs. singular items inventory issue

Our client has items set up within the storefront that can be sold as cases or singular items depending on what customer level you're logged in as. For example, retail customers can only order singular items while franchisee customers can only order cases. Setting up different prices for each level is easy enough but the problem comes with inventory. When a case is ordered, it should decrease the inventory by however much is in that case, let's say 20. Singular items would obviously decrease the inventory by 1. How might I go about setting this up? I can see that I could set restricted quantities in the variant options, but I don't see a way to map that option to a specific customer level. Similarly, I also don't see a way to create two different variants and have one variant map to the retail customer level and the other map to the franchisee customer level. Is there something I'm missing here or is the best way to accomplish this to just set up two different products and map those accordingly?

Thanks!

Setting up separate products is most likely the quickest solution. However, it may be problematic since it would not consolidate inventory. A potential solution - among others - is to leverage Kit Products. Kit Products can be composed of existing products. When a Kit is purchased, the inventory levels of its product components will be updated. Essentially, you would setup two Kit Products, both composed of the same product variant. A single Kit Product may also suffice, see notes below.

Setup:
Create a single product/variant. Set it up as your normally would, with pricing and inventory based on a single item (not cases). Create two Kit Products. One for retail customers, and another for franchisee customers.

For each Kit Product you will need to:
1) Add/reference the product variant you created.
2) At a minimum, set the appropriate Price and Inventory delta values. Set other fields as needed.
3) (optional) Specify the UOM, and any other details, in the product name, description, and/or summary fields.
4) Map each Kit Product to the appropriate Customer Level.

An alternate route, is to only setup one Kit Product for your franchisee customer level, while using the standard product for your retail customers.

Although I have not tested it, this should be a viable solution. Do consider the fact that Kit Product pages have a different layout and template composition. Design alterations may be needed, to have the page fit in with the rest of your site. Especially if you are currently not using Kit Products.

Other potential custom solutions:
- Min quantity order levels per customer level
- Restricted quantities per customer level (predefined quantity drop down)

I hope that provides some help.

Sincerely,
Robert

Thanks a lot for the reply. I hadn't considered utilizing Kits, so I'll have to try this out. I've also been considering customizing restricted quantities to allow that to be changed per customer level.