ChannelEngine: product bundles v2

This article describes the process of creating and managing product bundles on ChannelEngine. Bundles v2 is an update to the existing product bundles feature on ChannelEngine.

Table of contents

Introduction

Requirements and restrictions

Improvements

Prerequisites

Create a bundle

Generate bundle photos with AI

Set up bundle variations

View a bundle

List bundles

Delete a bundle

Update bundles (via a product feed)

Sell and ship bundles

Wildcard search

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.

If you want to sell two or more products as a 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

Requirements and restrictions

Product bundles require:

• A valid and unique Merchant product number/SKU.
• 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.

The following restrictions apply to product bundles:

• 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 last shipment. This is due to the channel acknowledging the sum, not the parts. 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 only 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. Again, this is due to the channel acknowledging the sum, not the parts.
• It is not possible to return only part of a bundle. You can only return the bundle as a whole, not the parts.
• Marketplaces do not support product bundles in their fulfillment services (e.g., FBA, LVB). Therefore, you cannot set bundles to fulfillment by marketplace.
• Bundle activation and deactivation are not automatic. Although a bundle's stock is based on its parts, if the product is deactivated (e.g.: removed from your feed) the bundle is not automatically deactivated. You must do this manually.
• ChannelEngine only import orders related to bundles if the bundle exists on ChannelEngine at the time of the import.

Improvements

Bundles v2 introduces several enhancements compared to the previous version, including:

• You can now create and manage product bundles via both the web interface and the Merchant API.
• Creating bundles is 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.
• You can 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, correctly indicate their Merchant product numbers via an additional product feed or the Merchant API. To learn more, check out the Set up bundle variations section of this article.
• It is possible to create a product bundle using variations that belong to the same product family. E.g.: Sustainable Suit black and Sustainable Suit white.
• You can register a return or a refund for an order that contains a bundle. To learn more, check out the article ChannelEngine: returns and refunds [beta].
• You can 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 this at any time.
• You must now assign a percentage split to each part of the bundle. 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%.
• Pricing options are more flexible now. Due to the introduction of percentage splits, you can apply promotions, price rules, and repricing to your bundle. This means that it is no longer necessary to change the price of each part to set up a price reduction, for example. ChannelEngine calculates changes in price based on the promotion or price rule you set and the percentage split assigned to each part.

Prerequisites

To use product bundles v2, reach out to your customer success manager or ChannelEngine's Support team to enable the New product bundles UI setting.

Enabling this setting upgrades your tenant from product bundles v1 to v2, automatically transitioning your bundles to the new model.

Create a bundle

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.
3. By default, the price of the bundle part is equal to the product’s original price. To change it, 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.
4. Adjust the quantity of each part included in the bundle.
5. 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%.
6. Adjust the total price of the bundle, if needed. A maximum of two decimal places are 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.
7. Populate the mandatory fields to provide more information about the bundle.
   1. Merchant product number - uniquely identifies products on ChannelEngine, including bundles. Enter any Merchant product number that is not already in use. To make it recognizable, either extend the SKU of the part and/or add the suffix '-bundle' to it.
   2. Global trade item number (GTIN) - the unique GTIN of your product bundle, e.g., an EAN or UPC. Do not reuse the GTIN of a single item in the bundle. This applies 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 create a product bundle.
   3. Name - the bundle's title. To create it using generative artificial intelligence (GAI), click the Generate the name and description using AI button.
   4. Description - the bundle's description. You can also generate this using artificial intelligence.
8. Select the reference product – from which the bundle's main attributes, such as Brand, Color, Category, and custom attributes are copied – using the Choose a product to copy key attributes from the dropdown.
9. To exclude custom attributes from the copied values, enable the Don't copy custom fields setting.
10. To apply the order extra data from your bundled products to the bundle itself, enable the Copy extra data from individual products setting. When an order for the bundle comes in, ChannelEngine retrieves the extra data from each part in the bundle and stores it in the bundle's order line extra data. If this setting is disabled, the order line extra data for the bundle is taken from the product selected in the Choose a product to copy key attributes from dropdown.
11. Additionally, configure the optional fields.
12. When you are done configuring your bundle, click Create product bundle to save it.

Generate bundle photos with AI

ChannelEngine's Create with AI tool 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 tool:

1. Go to Products, Product bundles and click the pencil icon by the bundle you want to create images for.
2. Scroll to the image attribute you want to generate an image for and click Create with AI.
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 products' existing images, and you can add other images to the selection. To do this, drag and drop the images from a file manager, for instance, or click the Drop files here or click to upload section.
5. 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.
6. To save the canvas as is, click Save canvas as image.
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. 

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 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 do this, use the Grandparent merchant product number (also called Grandparent SKU). In the Merchant API, this is set in the ParentMerchantProductNo2 field.

To learn more, check out the article ChannelEngine: parent-child relationships.

View a bundle

You can view bundles in the same way as regular products on ChannelEngine. The only difference is that there is an additional Bundle line next to the product type. By clicking Edit bundle, you can edit the bundle directly. This is also the screen where you can edit the bundle's extra data.

By clicking Add new custom field, you can add a new custom attribute to your bundle. If you want to copy the existing custom attribute from a different product, click Add existing custom field.

List bundles

If you include a product bundle in a channel's product selection or if it complies with an existing product selection filter, ChannelEngine exports it to the channel. Note that bundles need to be created on the channel, so they can only be used on channels that support a content connection.

The stock of the bundle is calculated based on the stock of its parts. 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 ten and the other with a stock of three, the stock of your bundle is three.

Delete a bundle

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

However, when updating a bundle, note that you cannot change its constituent parts by adding or removing products. You can update its price and attributes, such as the name, description, and custom fields, though.

Update bundles (via a product feed)

You can 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 feed, with the exception of the following:

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

Sell and ship bundles

When a bundle is ordered, the products contained in it are added to the order. Both in the Merchant API and in your store, you can see the parts of the bundle in the order as well as the quantity of bundles ordered.

When you ship a bundle, the bundle itself is added to the shipment – instead of its individual items. This shipment is then exported to the channel.

Wildcard search

The wildcard search feature allows you to quickly find the product you are looking for. To use the wildcard search feature, go to a page with a search bar, such as the Bundles page. Click the search bar and 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.