How can I keep track of stock with variants of an item?

[tomgreef]

My situation is the following: I want to sell Whiskey, but I could sell it with the following options: Coca Cola, Coca Cola Zero, Water and On the rocks (for example). I know I can make variants of an item, but how would it be possible for me to keep track of stock if I'm creating a new stock for each variant. 

So basically, If i order a Whiskey Cola, then stock should be removed from Whiskey and from Coca Cola (Which is a separate item, but we use it as an addition / variant to the Whiskey).

 

Could anyone help to find a logical solution to this? Or would I simply have to substract (each day) all the mixes variants to the original items?

 

Thanks,

Tom.

[Fer]

With item variants you are creating multiple items, it won't allow you to track stock of the different drinks.

For your specific case there is no straightforward solution. I can suggest you to use item modifiers instead. You still won't be able to track stock of the modifiers, but you have a "sales by modifier" report which may be more easy to track. Then you would have to subsctract manually the drinks stock.

Your other option is to actually create all the variations as composite items. Using composite items you can make recipes, adding the ingredients as components and writing how much quantity is being used.

This is a more time consuming process and you will end up with a large inventory, specially if the same process applies to different types of cocktails. But you will be able to track inventory.

[Xandrei]

I have the similar problem. I have 7 flavors of Pizza with different prices. Now, I have a Buy1 Take1 Promo where they can buy any 2 flavors for a single (discounted price). I also want to track the stock of each flavor sold. There are 128 combinations and it will really end up to a large inventory if I do the suggestion of Fer. To make the story short, I was given this suggestion on the Live Chat:

"Let us say you have Pizza A, Pizza B, Pizza C, and each has different prices. So with Buy 1 Take 1 promotion, your customer buys Pizza C with the price of $1.75 and takes Pizza A which is $1. As an alternative, what I can suggest is to add these two items to the ticket then apply a 100% discount to item Pizza A, which is free."

It still requires some workaround but I hope this could help you, too.