Plenty of things get sold together every time. A fitting kit, a starter pack, an installation with the parts it always needs. Typing the same six lines onto every quote is how one of them eventually gets left off.
A group is those products kept together as one thing you can sell, with its own code and its own total, and a choice about how much of it the customer sees.
What you can do
- Keep a set of products as one sellable thing, with its own code and total.
- Put it on a document either as its parts or as one line at one price.
- Choose which columns show for the parts, so a customer sees what you want them to.
- Price a component differently inside the group than it costs on its own.
- Discount a member line by a percentage or a fixed amount per unit.
- Set the group’s own total by hand where the parts are not the argument.
- Find a group the same way you find a product, from any document line - see products and your catalog.
How it works in practice
Build the group (Products → Groups). A group is a set of products with its own code and totals. Add the members, give each one a quantity, and it is ready to sell.
Decide what the customer sees. On a document, a group goes on exploded - every component on its own line - or imploded, which is one line at one price with the parts still behind it. A fitting kit usually goes on its parts. A service bundle usually goes on one line.
Show only the columns that help. Each group decides which columns its parts show - quantity, unit, product number, article code, stock, prices, discounts and tax among them - so a packing list of components can appear without the prices beside them.
Price a part for the bundle it is in. A component can be priced differently inside the group than it is on its own, which is how a bundle is worth buying. What you set stays set: nothing rewrites it later from the product’s own price.
Discount by the unit or by the percent. A member line is quantity times price, less its discount, where a fixed discount is per unit - twenty items at a dollar off is twenty dollars off the line. A percentage over a hundred stops at zero, and a negative discount is a markup.
Set the total yourself where it matters. With use margin on, the group’s own subtotal is a figure you type rather than a sum of its parts, for the bundles that are priced as a whole and broken down afterwards.
Good to know
- A member line keeps the details it was created with. The name, number, article code, unit and stock shown against a member are the ones in place when the line was added, and nothing updates them afterwards. Rebuild the line if a product is renamed and the group still has to read right.
- A group is not a manufactured item. It sells things together; it does not consume components and produce a finished unit at what that unit cost to make. That is manufacturing, which is a different switch and a different set of books.
- Imploding is about what the customer sees. One line at one price hides the breakdown; it is not itself a discount. A bundle that is meant to be cheaper than its parts gets there by pricing the members for the bundle, or by setting the group’s own total.