Most shopping cart systems let you have "options" or "attributes" such as color, size, style, etc. for your products. Those options usually appear to your customers as drop-down lists from which they can select the options that they want. The shopping cart then reports what item was sold, and which options or attributes were selected.
If you are using the Order Manager to track your inventory, and you sell clothing for example, it doesn't help you to know that you sold a shirt unless you also know what size and color your customer ordered. Similarly, when it comes time to re-order your inventory, you need to know exactly which colors, sizes, etc. you have in stock and which need to be ordered.
To solve those problems, the Order Manager can be configured to convert each SKU that is ordered with options into a different SKU that is for the specific item that was ordered. We call the original SKU the "parent SKU" and the final SKU the "sub SKU". For example, if your customer orders SKU 001 in green and medium, the sub SKU would become something like "001-green-medium". Or the options can be coded to result in shorter sub SKUs, resulting in something like "001-gr-m". The sub SKUs are used in the final order in the Order Manager and are also used for all inventory tracking purposes within the program. In some cases they can even be used with real-time inventory tracking systems with AbleCommerce and Yahoo!Store shopping carts. The Order Manager also includes tools to help manage your options and sub SKUs.
Note: Although different shopping cart systems use different terms for these lists (Order Options, Order Attributes, etc.) generally we refer to them as Options or Product Options.
How Product Options Work
There are several parts to the Product Option puzzle. It is important to understand these concepts, although some of them may not apply to your shopping cart.
Parent SKU: The main SKU or product that your customer sees in your Web store.
SKU Delimiter: Also known as "Web Delimiter". When the Order Manager builds sub SKUs, it can either use the entire option or a selected part of the option. (With some shopping carts, including Miva Merchant, AbleCommerce and Americart, you can also use a separate code for each option to build your sub SKUs.) If you just want to use the beginning part of the option in the sub SKU, the SKU Delimiter is the text that separates the portion to be used in the sub SKU from the rest of the option.
Example with option name and colon ( : ) for SKU delimiter: "Size=XL:Extra Large". Only the letters "XL" will be added to the parent SKU.
Example without option name and with "dash" for SKU delimiter: "CB005-Cotton Blend". Only the "CB005" will be added to the parent SKU.
Name Delimiter: For shopping carts that return the name of each option along with the selected option, such as "Color:Blue" or "Size=Medium". The Name Delimiter is the text that appears between the name and the selected option (":" or "=" in the examples).
Option Delimiter: For Americart and other shopping carts that combine the item name with its order options in a single field, this is the text that appears between the item name and the first option, and again between each additional option. Example: if the shopping cart returns "ABC001 option:green option:small" the Option Delimiter would be "option:".
Price Delimiter: If your order options include an amount that the options add to or subtract from the base price of the product, this is the text that separates the rest of the option from the price. Examples; price delimiter is a dollar sign: "Size=XL:Extra Large; $5.00" or "Chrome Finish; $35.00".
Sub SKU Delimiter: Also known as "Local Delimiter". This is the text that the program inserts between the Parent SKU and the SKU portion of each Order Option. Example: "ABC001-XL-BLK" (the sub SKU Delimiter is a "-")
The following links will take you to information about using options with specific shopping cart systems:
See Also