ChannelEngine: product bundles

This article describes how to bundle products on ChannelEngine.

Table of contents

Introduction

Supported features

Requirements

Limitations

Create a bundle

• Generate photos for product bundles with AI
• Add custom fields to the bundle
• Set up bundle variations

View a bundle

List bundles

Sell and ship bundles

Update a bundle

Delete a bundle

FAQs

Introduction

Bundling products is a popular way to generate sales, maximize profits, promote differentiated products, sell unpopular products, optimize advertising costs, and reduce decision-making pressure.

You create product bundles from individual products on ChannelEngine. On ChannelEngine, product bundles are combinations of separate products with individual SKUs that are sold together at one selling price. 

If you want to sell two or more individual products in combination, you can create a product bundle via ChannelEngine’s web interface or the Merchant API. Below are three examples of common bundles:

• An inkjet printer with additional ink cartridges
• A cocktail shaker with a jigger, strainer, and other accessories
• A compost bin with compostable bin bags

If you have already pre-packaged a physical product bundle in your warehouse, then it is associated with a single SKU. This physical product bundle is considered a single product on ChannelEngine because it has one SKU.

However, if you create a product bundle on ChannelEngine, your bundle as one SKU, and the component products retain their separate SKUs. Manage your product bundles at Products, Product bundles. For detailed guidance on how to manage product bundles via the Merchant API, check out Merchant API: product bundles.

Supported features

Product bundles on ChannelEngine enable you to sell smarter and faster through several features, including:

• Flexible management via UI and API - Create and manage product bundles via both the web interface and the Merchant API.
• Listing error prevention - Create bundles in a one-step process. Once a bundle is created, its composition cannot be changed. This means you cannot adjust the quantity of parts in the bundle, add new parts, or remove existing parts. This ensures the integrity of bundles already listed on marketplaces and helps prevent errors.
• (Grand)parent-child relationships - list product bundles on marketplaces that require two- or three-level product structures (i.e.: parent-child relationships), e.g.: Zalando, About You, Spartoo, La Redoute. You can bundle two parent products, such as 'T-shirt black' and 'Yoga pants black', and then bundle all the possible combinations of their child products. To set up parent-child relationships between these bundles, you must document their merchant product numbers in an additional product feed or via the Merchant API. To learn more, check out the Set up bundle variations section of this article. TKTK
• Bundles of variations - create a product bundle using variations that belong to the same product family. E.g.: Sustainable Suit black and Sustainable Suit white.
• Dynamic pricing updates - change the price of a bundle and its individual parts at any time. By default, the total price of a bundle is calculated as the sum of its parts, but you can update these prices at any time.
• Fail-safe price calculations - assign a percentage split to each part of the bundle as a mandatory step. This split determines how much of the final selling price is allocated to each component. E.g.: if the total price is 100%, Product A might account for 30%, and Product B for 70%.
• Automatic support for price rules, promotions, and repricing - thanks to the percentage splits, you can apply promotions, price rules, and repricing to your bundle. Based on the percentages, ChannelEngine automatically tunes the price of each part to set up a price reduction. ChannelEngine calculates changes in price based on the promotion or price rule you set and the percentage split assigned to each part.

Requirements

• On the overall product bundle, a valid and unique Merchant product number/SKU.
• On the overall product bundle, a valid and unique GTIN - numbers such as 0000000000000 and 1234567890123 are not valid. Although ChannelEngine does not prevent the creation of bundles with invalid GTINs, marketplaces do.

Limitations

• Once a product bundle is created on ChannelEngine, it is not possible to modify the products that are included in the bundle. 
• It is not possible to delete a product from a bundle.
• It is possible to spread the shipping of a bundle over multiple shipments, but the only shipping data ChannelEngine can export to a channel is the final shipment in the series. Buyers do not receive the tracking information for the earlier shipments; therefore, we advise you to ship bundles in one shipment.
• It is not possible to cancel any part of a bundle. If a specific product in the bundle is out of stock, you must report the entire bundle as out of stock. This is due to the channel acknowledging the full bundle as the sold
• Returns are not supported.
• Marketplace fulfillment services generally do not support fulfilling product bundles that you create from individually listed products. Therefore, it is not possible to set the fulfillment type on a created product bundle to fulfillment by marketplace. For more guidance on managing marketplace fulfillment on ChannelEngine, check out ChannelEngine: hybrid fulfillment.

• Bundles are not automatically deactivated if you remove one if its component products from your product feed. Although a bundle's stock level is based on the sum of the availability of its parts, the bundle is not automatically deactivated. You must deactivate bundles manually.
• ChannelEngine only imports orders related to bundles if the bundle exists on ChannelEngine at the time of the import.

Create a bundle

Via the web interface

To create a product bundle:

1. From the left-side menu, go to Products, Product bundles. Click Create product bundle.
2. Search for the products you want to bundle using one of the following attributes: Name, Merchant product number, or GTIN.
   • Wildcard search - the wildcard search feature allows you to quickly find a given product: 
     1. Click the search bar.
     2. Enter the wildcard character (%), preceded and/or followed by the characters from the product you are looking for. The (%) character replaces zero or more characters of any kind. E.g.: to search for all products that have the letters 's' and 'p', such as smartphone and soap, enter 's%p' in the search bar.
3. Select the first product in the bundle. Then, repeat Steps 1-3 until you have selected all the products to include in your bundle. 
4. By default, the price of the bundle part is equal to the product’s original price. To change the price, enter a new value under Unit price, or use the up-down control to adjust it incrementally. You can reset the price to its original value by clicking the circle arrow icon.
5. Adjust the Quantity of each part included in the bundle.
6. Decide how the bundle price is distributed among its parts using Percentage split. The total price, which is 100%, is made up of the prices of individual parts. E.g.: if product A is 160 EUR, and product B is 40 EUR, the total bundle price equals 200 EUR. The percentage split of product A is 80%, and that of product B – 20%. However, you can change the percentage split for each part. To do this:
   1. Disable the Automatically set percentages toggle.
   2. Enter new percentages for each part – make sure that the total equals 100%.
7. Adjust the total price of the bundle, if needed. A maximum of two decimal places is allowed. E.g.: 29.99. When you change the total price, the prices of individual parts are updated automatically based on their percentage split. E.g.: if you change the total bundle price to 240 EUR, product A now costs 192 EUR and product B – 48 EUR. You can also reset the total price to its default value. The default value is the sum of all product lines set to their original prices.
8. Configure the following fields to provide more information about the bundle:
   • Merchant product number - uniquely identifies the product bundle on ChannelEngine. Enter any Merchant product number that is not already in use. One suggestion is to extend the SKU of one of the parts by adding the suffix '-bundle' to it. This makes the bundle recognizable.
   • GTIN - the unique GTIN of your product bundle, e.g., an EAN or UPC. Do not reuse the GTIN of a given item from the bundle, even if your bundle contains multiple identical items. ChannelEngine does not validate the correctness of the GTIN, but most marketplaces require a valid GTIN to accept selling a product bundle.
   • Name - the bundle's title. To create a name using AI, click Generate the name and description using AI. 
   • Description - the bundle's description. You can also generate the description using AI. ChannelEngine creates the name and description based on known attributes of the bundle's individual items.
   • Choose a product to copy key attributes from - select the reference product from which the bundle's main attributes, such as Brand, Color, Category, and custom fields are copied – using the dropdown.
   • Don't copy custom fields - to exclude custom fields from the copied values, enable this setting.
   • Copy extra data from individual products - to apply the order extra data from the individual products to the orders of the full bundle, enable this setting. When an order for the bundle comes in, ChannelEngine retrieves the order extra data from each part of the bundle and stores it in the bundle's order line extra data. If this setting is disabled, the order line extra data of the bundle is taken from the product selected in Choose a product to copy key attributes from.
9. Additionally, configure the optional fields: Catalog price, Purchase price, VAT %, etc. 
10. To automatically generate images for your bundle, click Create with AI next to an Extra image field. For guidance on using AI to generate images of your vitual bundle, check out the Generate bundle photos with AI section below. 
11. When you are done configuring your bundle, click Create product bundle to save.

CSV bulk upload

It is also possible to create product bundles in bulk by uploading a CSV file. Foir guidance, check out the article ChannelEngine: create product bundles in bulk via CSV upload. 

Product feed

You can also add or update bundle information via an additional product feed. As with all additional feeds, this requires the exact Merchant product number/SKU, as is currently known on ChannelEngine for these bundles.

Most attributes can be updated via the product feed, with the exception of the following:

• Merchant product number
• GTIN
• Price
• Stock
• Product type
• Percentage split

Merchant API

Create and update product bundles via the Merchant API. For detailed guidance on how to manage bundles via the Merchant API, check out Merchant API: product bundles.

Generate photos for product bundles with AI

ChannelEngine's Create with AI feature allows you to combine the images of your bundled products into one or more images and generate backgrounds to better showcase them. 

To use the Create with AI tool:

1. Go to Products, Product bundles, and click the pencil icon on the bundle for which you want to create images.
2. Scroll to the image fields, and click Create with AI next to a given image field.
3. You see a basic image editor. On the left-hand side, you can select, erase, undo erase, change the color of the background, clear the canvas, and delete the selected element.
4. The tool automatically loads the existing images of the individual products. If the individual products have no images, then the image editor is blank. In this case, upload a photo.
5. You can upload more images. To add more images, drag and drop the images from a file manager, for instance, or click Drop files here or click to upload.
6. Click one or more images in the selection to add them to the canvas. If needed, arrange and resize the images. You can also adjust the brightness and contrast of a selected element using the sliders below the canvas.
7. To create a lifestyle image based on the elements on the canvas, click Generate AI background setting and select one of the options below:
   • Build a prompt - create a background by selecting predefined settings, such as location or theme.
   • Select a theme - create a background by selecting a theme.
   • Custom text prompt - create a background by manually entering a prompt. E.g.: a Parisian boutique, an Ecuadorian beach with white parasols, etc.
8. Click Generate AI background, and the system creates two different images based on your input. You can then select one of the options below:
   • Save selected photo as image - saves the selected image and presents you with the image URL, which can be copied and reused in product feeds or mappings.
   • Edit prompt - returns you to the image editor.
   • More options - requests two new images from the system. 
9. To save the canvas as is, click Save canvas as image.

Add custom fields to a bundle

Once your bundle is created, you can add dedicated custom fields to the overall bundle:

1. In Product details, click Add new custom field. 
2. Add a new custom field to your bundle. 
3. If you want to copy an existing custom field from a given product, click Add existing custom field.

Set up bundle variations

Some marketplaces – such as Zalando, About You, Spartoo, and La Redoute – require a two- or a three-level product structure (also known as (grandparent)-parent-child relationships) when listing products.

To set up a two-level product structure, start by creating a parent product, typically a product bundle, such as 'T-shirt black and T-shirt white'. Then, create child bundles based on a shared attribute such as size. E.g.:

• T-shirt black S + T-shirt white S (child bundle S)
• T-shirt black M + T-shirt white M (child bundle M)
• T-shirt black L + T-shirt white L (child bundle L)

Once the bundles are created, you must define their relationships. To do this, use either an additional product feed or the Merchant API. You cannot establish these (grand)parent-child relationships from the ChannelEngine web interface.

Each child bundle must reference its parent using the Parent merchant product number (also known as the Parent SKU). The JSON example below shows how to link child bundles to a parent via the ParentMerchantProductNo field.

[
 {
  "Ean": null,
  "Description": "A bundle that includes parent products.",
  "MerchantProductNo": "P-bundle",
  "Name": "T-shirt black and white",
  "ParentMerchantProductNo": null
 },
 {
  "Ean": "1234567891011",
  "Description": "A bundle that includes child products in size S.",
  "MerchantProductNo": "C-bundle-S",
  "Name": "T-shirt black and white S",
  "ParentMerchantProductNo": "P-bundle"
 },
 {
  "Ean": "1234567891011",
  "Description": "A bundle that includes child products in size M.",
  "MerchantProductNo": "C-bundle-M",
  "Name": "T-shirt black and white M",
  "ParentMerchantProductNo": "P-bundle"
 }
]

To set up a three-level product structure, add a grandparent product above the parent level. Keep in mind that:

• The grandparent product does not reference its children (parents) or grandchildren.
• Each parent product (the second level) must include a reference to its grandparent. To reference the grandparent on the parent product, use the Grandparent merchant product number (also called Grandparent SKU). 
• In the Merchant API, set the grandparent SKU in the ParentMerchantProductNo2 field.

To learn more about (grand)parent-child relationships, check out the article ChannelEngine: parent-child relationships.

View a bundle

View a bundle in two ways:

1. Go to Products, Product bundles, and click the eye icon on the line item of a given bundle. 
2. Go to Products, Products, Product details. In Content, Specifications, the Bundle product field shows a green checkmark box. 

List bundles

If you include a product bundle in a channel's product selection, ChannelEngine exports the bundle to the channel. 

The stock of the bundle is calculated based on the stock of its component products. The bundle mirrors the stock of the product with the lowest availability – based on the quantities in the bundle. E.g.: if a bundle consists of two items, one with a stock of 10 and the other with a stock of three, the stock of your bundle is three.

Sell and ship bundles

When a bundle is ordered, its component products are added to the order. Both via the Merchant API and the web interface, you see the component products of the bundle on the order, as well as the quantity of bundles ordered.

When you ship a bundle, the overall bundle is added to the shipment – instead of its component products. This shipment is then exported to the channel.

Update a bundle

Bundle composition

A bundle represents a separate product listed on a marketplace. Once a bundle is created, its composition (i.e.: its parts) and unique identifiers cannot be changed. That is because changing these details may have irreversible consequences and affect open orders. For this reason, you cannot add or remove products from a bundle on ChannelEngine. 

To change the composition of a bundle, create a new product bundle with the desired parts. 

Price and standard attributes

However, you can update the bundle components' prices and the bundle's overall price and attributes, including its name, description, and custom fields, at any time via the user interface or the Merchant API. 

To update a bundle, go to Products, Product bundles. Click the pencil icon to edit the bundle's attributes.

For detailed guidance on how to manage bundles via the Merchant API, check out Merchant API: product bundles.

Delete a bundle

To delete a bundle, go to Products, Product bundles. Click the pencil icon to edit the bundle. At the bottom of the Edit page, click Delete. You can only delete a bundle via the web interface. 

If you delete a bundle, it is processed as a 'soft delete', which means that the product is made inactive – but still exists. As a result, it is not possible to create a new bundle with the same data.

If the bundle has already been sold on multiple channels, deleting the bundle is not recommended. In most cases, it is better to update the bundle instead of deleting a bundle and adding a new one.

FAQs

Can I remove a specific part from my bundle?
No, it is not possible to add or remove parts of a bundle. Doing so would affect open orders and the listing on the marketplace. To change the composition of a bundle, create a new bundle with the desired parts.