Inventory control for multiple variants with common stock

[nathan.agin]

Given the research in these forums, what I'm trying to do may be impossible, but here goes...

We are running a series of workshops. To keep the specifics simple:

• Initial price is $100

• There are 15 total spots

• Participants can sign up to attend on Tuesdays, Wednesday, or Thursdays

• They can add private coaching for an additional $100

I understand how to use variations and variants to create all the possible combinations (of dates and coaching), but it doesn't seem to be possible to control the TOTAL amount of students on any one date.

For example, I end up creating one variant for "Tuesdays w/ coaching" and 1 variant for "Tuesdays w/out coaching" (and the other permutations), but I can't state that only 5 spots can be sold TOTAL for Tuesdays - with or without coaching. Once I select "variants", I lose the ability to set an overall stock number.

Is there a way through this I'm missing? Thanks!

[E-junkie_Guru]

Unfortunately there's no way to use Variants but have every possible Variant track a common stock quantity in inventory; rather, each Variant would need to track its own stock.

We can only suggest using Variations instead for your workshop dates, which would all track the product's stock in common, then have a separate add-on product for the private coaching.

Or of course you could just set up Variants without using the "Limit available stock setting", leave the stock figure at 0 for every Variant, then manually edit the product to enable "Limit available stock" when registration is full.

[nathan.agin]

Thanks for the ideas!

Is there any way to tie the "add-on" product of coaching to the workshop, in perhaps an upsell? Or would they need to add "both" items to their cart?

Is there a way to feature an "add-on" item on the product card of another product?

The second option of not limiting stock is intriguing too. It just sounds like there will be some kind of manual process of adjusting inventory throughout registration with this step, unless I'm mistaken.

[E-junkie_Monster]

The second option would be easy to implement, just turn stock counting off and leave stock levels at zero... then when you're ready to stop orders turn the stock counting on manually and the item will no longer be available. This will work fine if you don't need to keep track of the "stock" for each individual day separately... if you do then I'd recommend doing a separate product for each day so that you can easily keep them separate and take down days that have filled up.

Otherwise there's no way to add extra items to your cart when using Product Cards. A variant with the additional price would be the best way to track additional coaching.

[nathan.agin]

Got it, thanks for clarifying and sharing some options!