Kits

A kit is a product that is made up of other products, its components. A gift box with a mug and two spoons, a starter set or a multipack are typical kits. Customers order the kit; the warehouse ships the components that make it up.

In Boxture any product with at least one component is a kit. The Kit column in the products overview shows which products are kits.

Setting up a kit

1. Create the component products and publish them. Only active products can be chosen as components.
2. Create the kit product (or open an existing product).
3. Go to the Kitting tab.
4. In Component product, choose the first component and enter the Quantity that goes into one kit.
5. Click + to add the next component. Repeat for all components.
6. Save and publish the kit.

Using the example above, the kit GIFTBOX has two component rows: MUG with quantity 1 and SPOON with quantity 2.

You can also import kits, with one row per component. See Creating products.

Rules for kit products

The kit has to be set up in line with its components, so that tracking information isn't lost when components become a kit. Boxture checks this when you save:

If a component…	then the kit…	Error
is serialized	must be serialized too	Serialized
is serialized with mode Outbound or Full	must use the same serialization mode	Serialization mode
is lot tracked	must be lot tracked too	Lot tracked
is expirable	must be expirable too	Expirable

In addition:

• A kit can have at most one serialized component and at most one lot-tracked component.
• The quantity of each component must be greater than 0.
• You can't change or remove components while orders for the kit are being processed (order lines in state processing). The error lists the orders involved; finish or cancel those first.

Two ways to fulfil a kit

There are two ways a kit can get to the customer:

1. Built in advance (kit to inventory): you assemble kits in the warehouse with a kit order. The finished kits become inventory of the kit product, with their own bin location, and are picked like any other product.
2. Put together on demand (kit to order): you don't stock finished kits. When a kit is ordered, Boxture allocates the components instead, and the warehouse picks and packs the components.

Both can be combined: Boxture always uses finished kits first and only falls back to the components when kit to order is allowed.

Kit to order

Kit to order decides whether a kit that isn't in stock as a finished kit may be split into its components when it is ordered.

• The account setting Kit › Kit to order is the default for all kits. It is on by default.
• Each kit can override it with its own Kit to order setting, shown below the product. When left empty, the account setting applies.

What happens when an order line for a kit is allocated:

1. Boxture first looks for finished kits (inventory of the kit product itself) at the location.
2. If there are none and kit to order is on, it looks for the components. All components for one kit, in the right quantities, must be available at the same location; if one is missing, nothing is allocated for that kit. Components that are expirable are only used if they haven't expired. The allocated components are added to the order as separate order line items, so they show up on the pick list.
3. If kit to order is off, only finished kits can be allocated. The line waits for kit stock (backorder) unless it's a kit order.

Kit to order also changes how much of the kit Boxture reports as available. With kit to order on, the available quantity of a kit is the number of finished kits plus the number of kits that can be put together from the components in stock. For example: 5 finished GIFTBOX kits, 10 mugs and 12 spoons give 5 + 6 = 11 available. This figure is also used when sending stock levels to shop integrations. With kit to order off, only finished kits count.

When a component isn't set up complete and the account restricts transactions to set-up products, allocating the kit fails with "COMPONENT is not setup complete".

Building kits with a kit order

A kit order builds a number of kits at a destination location:

1. Create a kit order, choose the destination location and add order lines with the kit product and the number of kits to build. Only kit products can be added.
2. The components are allocated and picked from picking and bulk bins.
3. With Build, choose the bin location and the number of kits to build. The picked components are consumed and the same number of finished kits are added to inventory at that bin location.

Kit orders are not packed or shipped; they only produce kit inventory. Every build is recorded and shows up in the Kitting transactions report. Kit orders use components even when kit to order is off.

Allow kit to inventory

The account setting Inventory › Allow kit to inventory decides whether kit products themselves may hold stock outside of kit orders. It is on by default. When it's off:

• Kit products can't be selected when adjusting inventory, releasing inventory or receiving on a purchase order or other receiving order, and those actions refuse a kit product.
• Kit products can't be selected on order lines of orders that don't ship goods out, such as purchase orders.
• Components are not affected: you can still receive and adjust them as usual.

Turn it off when you only ever fulfil kits from their components, so that nobody accidentally receives a "finished kit" that doesn't physically exist.

Impromptu kits from Shopify

With the Shopify integration you don't have to set up every kit in advance. A Shopify variant whose SKU contains a quantity tag in square brackets is turned into an impromptu kit: Boxture creates a kit product with that SKU as its number and takes the components from the SKU itself.

The SKU lists the component product numbers, joined by tags:

Tag	Meaning
[+]	Add the next component once.
[+n]	Add the next component n times.
A tag at the end	Add the last component n more times.

Examples:

SKU	Components
MUG[+]SPOON	1 × MUG, 1 × SPOON
MUG[+2]SPOON	1 × MUG, 2 × SPOON
[+3]CANDLE	3 × CANDLE
MUG[+]MUG[+]SPOON	2 × MUG, 1 × SPOON (repeated numbers are added up)

Rules:

• Component numbers may contain letters, digits, dots, hyphens and underscores, and are matched without regard to case.
• Every component must already exist as a product in the account. If one is missing, the Shopify product isn't saved and the error is reported on the integration.
• Negative quantities ([-]) and malformed tags (unbalanced brackets, two tags in a row, a tag without any component) are rejected.
• As long as the impromptu kit has no inventory, its components are rebuilt from the SKU each time Shopify sends the product.
• Like other Shopify products, the kit is published automatically when the Shopify product is active.

See Shopify for setting up the integration.

Kits in inventory and reporting

• Finished kits are ordinary inventory of the kit product and appear in the inventory overview.
• The Kitting transactions report lists kit builds.
• Kit orders and their states are described in Kit orders.