CP-Commerce

For a number of reasons in CounterPoint items that would normally be gridded are setup as separate items. Most commonly this is done to track variant specific pricing and costs. When selling these products online it is beneficial from a customer shopping experience standpoint to group these separate items together as configurable products.

Creating a Parent Configurable Attribute

To get started, you must first create a configurable attribute (whatever it is that changes between the linked items, it could be size, color, width)

1. In Counterpoint, navigate to CPCommerce > Product Attributes
2. Create your attribute with the following settings
   1. Attribute Code: Unique name for this attribute, must start with a letter and no spaces are allowed.
   2. Label: Will display on the website next to the dropdown of available options
   3. Type: Dropdown
   4. Scope: Global
   5. Configurable: Checked

Continue creating as many attributes as necessary to define your products.

Creating a Child Value

Next, you'll need to define all of the different available options (values).  If your attribute is Color your values might be blue, red, green, and black.

1. In Counterpoint, navigate to CPCommerce > Product Attribute Values
2. Create your values with the following settings
   1. Attribute Code: The same unique code defined in the previous step Creating a Parent Configurable Attribute
   2. Value Code: A unique code for this value
   3. Label: The label to show to the customer when selecting this option
   4. Sort Order: the position of this value in relation to the other values
3. 

Continue creating as many values as necessary to define all your options.

Creating the Parent Item

Next, you'll define the parent or umbrella item.  This item is a non-inventory container item to tie all the child items together.  Keep in mind that all of the visible attributes on the website will come from this item, this includes things like Ecommerce Category, description, attributes, etc.

1. In Counterpoint, navigate to Inventory > Items
2. Create an item with the following required values:
   1. Main > Item Type: Non-Inventory
   2. Main > Tracking method: Normal
   3. Ecommerce > Ecommerce Item: Checked
   4. CPCommerce > Parent Item: Checked
   5. CPCommerce > Parent Attribute 1-6: This should be all of the attributes created in the first step Creating a Parent Configurable Attribute
      

Linking Child Items

The child items should already be existing, you'll just need to go to each and assign the parent item number, along with any values for each of the attributes for that particular child.  The child items must also be marked as ecommerce items.

Continue linking all of your child items until you're done.

End Result

Once everything syncs up, you should have a product on the website like this:

A note about price

It is possible to list different prices for the different options.  There are some display differences based on whether the parent price is set lower or higher than the child items.  With the parent price set to the lowest amount of any of the children, the category view lists the parent price and then the dropdown has the price difference.

If you set the parent price to the highest amount of any of the children, the category view will list the parent price and sometimes an "As low as.." indicator, or simply a crossed out price for the lowest of the children depending on template

 settings.