Inventory attributes are a powerful way to organize and manage your inventory when you are stocking multiple variants of one product.
3 BASIC ELEMENTS:
Variants are different versions of identical products.
For example, shirts that are all the same except for size and color could have four variants: (1) Small/Green, (2) Small/Blue, (3) Medium/Green and (4) Medium/Blue.
Attributes are the labels for dividing up variants.
For example, our example variant of shirts could have an Attribute called "Size" containing the values of S, M, L, XL, XXL and an Attribute called "Color" containing the values of Green, Blue, Red, Orange.
Attributes are managed in Ricochet by going to Preferences > Product > Attributes.
Values are the actual elements (Small, Medium, Large, XL, or Green, Blue, Red, Orange, etc.) from an attribute assigned to a product to create a variant. Once the attributes you want are created, you can create a variant of a product using assigned values.
Another example is if you're consigning a dozen ballet shoes of the same designer, you can use a shoe size attribute to distinguish all of the different pairs from each other, creating a variant for each size you have. This reduces the amount of time spent on creating individual products and printing labels.
First, create Attribute categories
In Ricochet,
Click Preferences
Click Product
Click Attributes
Click the yellow "+" icon to create a new attribute tree.
Input an Attribute Name (ex: Color, Size, Condition)
Input the Attribute Values (ex: Blue, Green, Red / Small, Medium, L, XL / New, Used, Like New)
*NOTE: You can rearrange the order of these with click, drag, and drop.
Click Save.
Assign attributes to a product and create a Variant
In Ricochet,
Click Products
Click New Item
Under the Pricing & Inventory box, Select Product With Variants
Select the attribute(s) relevant to the variants you need.
Select the value(s) you are carrying of that product.
NOTE:
You can click the yellow "+" icon to add new attributes and values as necessary. 3 attributes is the maximum allowed.
Toggle ON or OFF any variants you aren't carrying in your store.
You can save time entering the details for each variant by entering the information for one and clicking "Copy to All."
As you add attributes and values, Ricochet will automatically create the various possible combinations of products based on your attributes and values being used.
Variant Best Practices:
Variants are most effective when used sparingly. We recommend using common attributes like color, size, or condition. We strongly discourage using excessive attributes like wood type, style, material, etc.. If you want to categorize your inventory by features, it is best to do that with strong category and subcategory management.
Item attributes are critical with an online web store. Item attributes act like variants on the product page itself. Meaning if you have multiple sizes of a jacket, for example, users can select the Small, Medium, Large, or Extra Large from the drop down when buying online to filter what they are looking for.
