How Product Bundles, Kits & Multi Packs Work
Overview
In this article, we'll show you how to build out bundles & kits on SoStocked. A bundle is a group of products or raw materials, typically purchased from multiple suppliers and assembled together, to sell as a final product on Amazon.
Defining A Bundle
A bundle is simply the combination of products (or component parts) that are combined together to form a bundle or a kit as one finalized product (ASIN or SKU) depending on how you refer to it on Amazon for example. Typically, bundled components are purchased from different suppliers, then matched up or bundled together at another location. But they can also be multi-packs: one type of product bundled into 2 or 3 or 10-packs.
NOTE: If you are combining component parts for a product, and if you source all of these parts from the SAME SUPPLIER, who then packages them all together, then this is not a bundle. It's just a product, and you would handle that by giving your single supplier instructions on the Purchase Order (PO). Again, bundles or kits are complicated products where you source parts to be bundled together elsewhere.
Manufacturing vs. Bundling
SoStocked is a forecasting and inventory management software for Amazon products, we are not a manufacturing inventory software. Imagine if you owned an automobile dealership and you sold cars. You would need inventory software to keep track of your inventory and parts, to ensure you have enough cars, trucks, tires, etc. to meet your customers' needs without overstocking on slow-moving merchandise. If somebody asked your inventory software to tell you how many raw materials to order to BUILD a new truck, that would be outside the scope of that software. SoStocked can do basic bundling and kitting (tier 1) of basic component parts, but it is not manufacturing software.
How to Make a Bundled Item
After watching this video, you might want to check out our article on How to Bundle Products in Bulk
Multi-Packs
A multi-pack is also a bundle. For example, you purchase single tubes of toothpaste from your supplier, then bundle them into a 3-pack at your prep center before sending to Amazon. Those are handled the same way as bundles. Simply choose the number of tubes of toothpaste (raw material) that makes up that one ASIN or SKU (the final bundle) per the video above.
Forecast Warning
While bundling is an excellent feature in SoStocked, the algorithm cannot automatically allocate or deduct inventory for raw materials that are already in your warehouse. Bundling is based on the logic that when you place an order for a product, the system will always ORDER NEW INVENTORY and then bundle it into the final product. The forecast is not capable of forecasting raw materials' inventory that is already in stock at a warehouse and then allocating portions of those RM to bundles. The reason is actually very simple: if you have 1000 units of RM #1 sitting in a warehouse somewhere, the forecast would have to “know” how much of that product should be allocated to each bundle. Imagine if this same RM was used in 10 different products. Now imagine if that RM was an ASIN that was sold by itself on Amazon. This can get very complex. So, we designed the system to order new RM and bundle it.
So just know that if you have a bunch of raw materials (ingredients) in inventory, you should create a Work Order (not a PO) to bundle them into their respective multi-packs FIRST, so that inventory is counted against the final ASIN. DO THIS BEFORE PLACING POS FOR NEW INVENTORY.
How to Make Bundled Products Using Existing Inventory (No PO)
Creating bundles or multi-packs in SoStocked is easy to do, even f you have existing inventory at a warehouse. Simply create a Work Order (instructions for the warehouse) to combine and store (or ship) the raw goods into the final sellable product.
How to Make a Bundle When You Have Some of the Raw Materials in Stock, but You Need to Order Others from the Supplier
In this example, we have something called "Bridal Gloves BUNDLE". This is the final product that is selling on Amazon. These two products (RM Gold Foil and RM Lace Fabric) are raw materials or component parts that make up the bundle.
There's a couple of different types of bundles, one is something like this where you have raw materials combined together that make one bundle that we sell on Amazon.
You could also have two different ASINs that are sold together and make up a third product which is the bundle. So you can sell these two products (RM Gold Foil and RM Lace Fabric) on Amazon as its own SKU or ASIN, but if you bundle them together, it creates this one ASIN.
How To Build Out A Bundle
There are different ways to bundle products. The one thing that all bundles have in common is that their component parts are generally sourced from different suppliers. This is very important because sometimes people get confused when it comes to bundles. They think that if you're purchasing lace fabric from Supplier A, and you're also purchasing this gold foil from Supplier A, and they're bundling it into this "Bridal Gloves BUNDLE" all at supplier A, then you need to create a bundle. No, you don't need to create a bundle. All you have to do is to click on that product and give your supplier some instructions.
I've written out the instructions here. "If all ingredients or components (raw materials) are coming from the same supplier and being assembled at the same location, it's not a bundle. It's just a product. Put product instructions for suppliers here..."
So here's an example of a product that is not a bundle. I'm ordering all these component parts from the same supplier and I will just put these instructions for my purchase order right here that will show up on the PO. For example, this product contains 1 pack of lace fabric, 1 pack of gold foil, 1 package insert, and 1 box. All these products are being purchased from the same supplier or vendor and they're packaging them together and then they're sending that to me where I'm going to sell them on Amazon, Walmart, or whatever. So you don't need to create a bundle, you just need to give them instructions like you would normally do.
The first thing that you need to do when you're setting up your bundles is to go set up your vendors correctly. So we're going to go down here to the Vendors page. This is the important part, whichever vendor is assembling the final bundle together into its final sellable state, must be assigned as either a Warehouse or a Prep Center. That means that they can receive inventory from a supplier. In this case, it's going to be Denver Warehouse, so I'm going to click on Denver Warehouse.
Make sure to check this box that says Prep Center so that it is both a warehouse and a prep center which means that it can assemble and store inventory.
Scroll down, and don't forget to click on "Save Changes". That way, when we set up our component parts of the bundle, they can all meet up at that final destination which is Denver Warehouse and it now has the ability to prep, store, and send that final bundle to Amazon, Walmart, or whatever its final destination is.
Let's go back to our bundle page and click on this final bundled product which is the "Bridal Gloves BUNDLE".
The first thing that you should do is to decide if you're building this bundle from scratch or if you're just assembling various component parts that already exist in my catalog. To do that, you just have to scroll down and enable "Bundled Product" under the Supplier Pricing section. It will open up this little area where you can choose the component parts that make up the bundle. If you already have these component parts created in your catalog, you simply have to click and select them on the drop-down list. You will then choose how many units of each product are inside that bundle. Again, these two products (RM Gold Foil and RM Lace Fabric) can be products that you're already selling on Amazon separately or they can be raw materials (RM stands for raw materials). Now, if you notice here, the lead time actually ends at Amazon and that is incorrect. In order for this to work, both of these products need to have a lead time that actually ends at the prep center which is the Denver Warehouse that we set up. Otherwise, this won't work because you can't order these different products from two different suppliers and just send them directly to Amazon and have Amazon bundle them for you -- that's not how it works. So we'll have to fix that but for now, we're just building our final bundled product.
Now, let's say that one of the component parts of the bundled product did not exist yet. What you have to do is to go to your Inventory page, and click on the "+" button on the upper left of the page, then click "+ PRODUCT".
First, you have to give the product that you're creating a name.
Make sure that you have a marketplace assigned so that you can give it a lead time.
Choose a supplier that you're sourcing it from and give it a cost per unit.
Click on the lead time to edit it.
In this case, I'm going to choose a lead time that already exists called "70 days - Bundle Lead Time" which ends at the 3rd-party warehouse which is Denver Warehouse which is also the prep center. Then click on "Confirm".
Then, click on "Save Changes". That's if you were building those raw materials or core components from scratch.
In this case, I don't need to because I already have the built but what I do need to do is to fix those lead times. So I'm going to go inside of each one of these raw materials and I'm going to change the lead time to the "70 days - Bundle Lead Time". First, click on the RM Gold Foil.
Scroll down, and click on the lead time.
Click on the drop-down list and select "70 days - Bundle Lead Time". Then, click "Confirm".
Make sure that it's saved correctly, then click on "Save Changes".
Next, click on the second product which is the RM Lace Fabric.
Scroll down, and click on the lead time to edit it.
Click on the drop-down list and select "70 days - Bundle Lead Time". Then, click "Confirm".
Make sure that it's saved correctly, then click on "Save Changes".
Now, go to your Forecast page, and type "bridal gloves bundle" on the All Forecasts dashboard.
As you can see, the system is recommending that we order 760 units and we should also transfer some units. If we were to do that, let's go ahead and click on the blue transfer button and see what that looks like.
The system is going to create a work order for us from the Denver Warehouse where everything is stored. So it should have a work order number and today's date. In this case, it's asking us what should be done with the items. So we actually want to combine items, and then we want to ship them to Amazon so we have to have both of these two boxes checked. Now, choose the product that you want to bundle. The system already knows what that bundle consists of so it knows that we need one of each of the products that are included in the bundle to make one product. In this case, we need to send 100 units to Amazon, so we should probably bundle 100 units.
Now, the second part of the work order says to ship 100 units of the final bundled product. The transfer time into Amazon will take 15 days (default transfer time from the warehouse), and we're going to track it automatically through our order tracker.
Now, scroll down and click on "Save & Preview".
As you can see, the work order is in draft mode right now. Click on "Submit Order".
As soon as you click that "Submit Order" button, it will make the work order active. As you can see, you can email it right here to your supplier.
You can also attach your Amazon shipping labels or any other attachments, and you could customize a message to them and send it directly from SoStocked. Once you're done, you can click on "Send & Close".
Now, if we go to our Order Tracker, we can see that our work order is right here and it's already en route to Amazon. We'll have to reconcile that Amazon shipment to this work order so everything gets checked in properly.
The same process applies if we're placing a new purchase order from our suppliers. Click on the green order button.
You also have to give it its purchase order number. In this case, we're actually going to have 2 purchase orders. The first one is for RM Gold Foil which is coming from ABC Supplier, and it's saying that we should purchase 760 units of that raw material, and as we already know, our lead time is going to end at the Denver Warehouse.
Now, scroll down and click on the blue button to go to the next step.
Now, we're on the 2nd P.O. and we're going to give it a different purchase order number. As you can see, this one is our second raw material which is coming from XYZ Supplier. It's also saying that we should purchase 760 units of this raw material and that the lead time is also going to end at the Denver Warehouse.
Scroll down and click on the blue button to go to the next step.
Now, we're on that final work order for the Denver Warehouse which is telling them that all of these units will arrive and they need to combine those items into this bundle. In this case, I'm going to want them to actually ship them to Amazon too although that's not part of our lead time so that's optional otherwise they would just warehouse those bundled products. SoStocked will actually send both POs and the work order all at the same time. As you can see, this is actually dated in the future. When I email this WO out, I can choose to email it on this date or I can backdate it so that these POs are emailing out to my suppliers on the day that I want the production started and the work order is not going out until the day that it's expected to arrive at the Denver Warehouse.
So that's the basics of how bundling works in SoStocked. There are some more fine details that we'll cover later, but that should get you started in building and submitting your first bundle.