Option sets

An option set is a reusable list of choices. You define it once on the Option Sets page and attach it to as many products as you like. Edit the set later and every product that uses it updates at once. A choice already in a customer’s cart keeps the name and price it was added with.

Three kinds of set

When you create a set, the first thing you pick is what kind it is:

• A list of choices. Named options, each with its own price: colours, finishes, or set sizes like Small, Medium, Large. The customer picks one, or several where you allow it.
• A measured size. Priced by dimensions and a rate, for anything sold by the metre or the square metre: cut-to-size banners, fabric, rope, worktops. The customer types a size, or picks a ready-made one.
• A price table. Priced from a grid you already have, widths down one side and drops across the other, the way a blind maker or a glazier works.

Most shops only ever need the first. The other two have their own guides at sell by measured size and price from a look-up table.

Create a list of choices

1. Go to Option Sets and press New set. Pick the closest ready-made starting point (garment colours, sizes S to 4XL, UK shoe sizes, paper and board sizes, bag weights, finishes, charged add-ons like gift wrap) or Start from scratch. A starting point opens the editor filled in, as your own copy to rename, prune or reprice, and nothing saves until you press Save set.
2. Leave This set is on a list of choices. Add your options. Each has a name and, for colours, a swatch. Leave the swatch blank and AddOnBoss fills it in from the name for common colours; see colour swatches.
3. Give any option a price where it costs more, say +2.00 for 4XL. Blank means the same as the rest.
4. If one choice runs out on its own, type a count in its stock box. Blank means unlimited, which is right for most choices. See stock on a single choice.
5. Save.

The Option Sets library: build a set once, reuse it across every product.

Check the set as customers see it

Under the set editor, the Option set preview panel renders your set the way a product page will: the choices, the photos, the prices and the receipt. Nothing needs saving first.

• Draft shows what is on your screen now. It redraws a moment after you stop typing.
• Last saved shows the set as your products offer it today.
• Desktop and Phone switch the width.

The panel demonstrates on a stand-in product, so the base price is an example. Your real products supply their own prices on their own pages.

Let customers pick more than one

A set usually asks for one answer, a size is a size. Some sets are naturally several answers: toppings, fixings, extras. In the set editor, under Customers choose, switch the set from One to Several and the customer ticks as many as apply, each pick adding its own charge.

• Set the bounds if you need them. At least and Up to hold the number of picks; leave a box empty for no bound. The rule shows beside the choices in plain words, “Choose up to 3.”, and a pick past the bound is refused with the same sentence, on the page and at the till. An optional set left entirely alone is simply no answer; the bounds apply once the customer starts picking.
• Charges simply add up. Each picked option contributes its own price, and the sum joins the line for every item bought. On the page a several-of set always states each option as a surcharge, “+£4.50”, never as a whole price, because several whole prices on one line would each be promising a different total.
• Every pick lands on its own row. The cart line and the order list each pick under the set’s name, “Fixings: Drilled holes (+£4.50)”, “Fixings: Standoff kit (+£9.00)”, so nothing hides inside a comma.

A long several-of set, past a dozen options, swaps the row of buttons for a tidy tick-box list, one option per row, so twenty extras read as a list rather than a wall of chips. (A long pick-one set becomes a dropdown in the same way.) If you would rather keep the buttons however long the set grows, tick Keep the buttons for long lists on the set.

Organise a large library

Sets file into groups, and the page stays readable at a hundred groups and more:

• Every group reads as one line: its name, a preview of what is inside, and where it came from. The library starts folded, and it remembers which groups you keep open.
• The list pages itself. Pick 10 to 100 groups a page and the choice sticks.
• Search reaches everything. Typing filters the page in place; press Enter and the search covers the whole library, by set name, group name or any option inside a set. A source filter narrows to one supplier’s sets, or to the ones you built yourself.
• Collapse all folds the page back to its group headers in one press.

Each group has its own menu: rename it everywhere at once, duplicate it, start a new set inside it, move all its sets to Ungrouped, or delete it; its sets are kept and move to Ungrouped.

Move or copy a set

A set’s own menu offers Move to and Copy to. Both open a picker with a search box and every group in the library, plus New group, so a destination on another page is never out of reach. A move keeps the set as it is. A copy is a fresh set of your own: where the original came from a supplier feed, the feed keeps refreshing the original and never touches the copy, and the supplier badge follows that promise. A name already taken in the destination gains “(copy)”.

Attach a set to a whole category

To put the same set on many products at once, open a set and use Attach to products: pick a category and AddOnBoss attaches the set to every simple product in it, skipping any that already offer it. Handy for rolling a colour or size set across a whole range in one go.

Reorder and rename

Options within a set drag into any order, and that order is what the customer sees. Rename a set or an option at any time; because products reference the set rather than copying it, the change reaches every product that uses it. Prices already committed to a cart are untouched.

A different name on the product page

A set can show shoppers a different name than the one it is filed under. In the set editor, the Label field holds the name the product page shows; the set’s own name stays what the library, the picker and search go by.

This matters most in a large library. A supplier feed files sets under searchable names, “GD56 - Heavy Blend Colour” say, so you can find the right one across two hundred products, but that name worn as the group heading reads like a part number to a customer. Give the set a label such as “Colour” and the product page, the cart and the order all say that instead. Leave the label blank and the set’s own name is shown, exactly as before.

Move sets between stores

Sets live on the store, not on a single product. On the Option Sets page, Export all sets downloads the library as one file, and Import sets on another store recreates them with their identity intact, so any product already attached lines up. Handy for staging sites and agency work. See import & export sets.

Where a set is used

A set is shared, so the same Colour set can sit on a hundred products and on bundles in BundleBoss at the same time. Editing the set updates them all. To offer only part of a set on one product, override its options on that product’s Product Options panel rather than editing the shared set.

Every set says Used on N products, and the figure opens. Click it and a dialog lists the products themselves, twenty at a time with Show more, each linking to its own editor; a find box narrows the list by name, or by id with a leading #. All N in Products at the foot lands on the Products screen filtered to exactly those products, with a notice naming the set and the way back. A product that is not published says so beside its name, and a product in the bin does not count until it is restored.