This section is intended for both site owners and designers of sites where the Catalog and Shopping Cart is enabled.

Note: always set up the Option Group before trying to set up options which will be assigned to that group.

Setup Option Group:

• Select the Option Group button.
• Enter a unique, descriptive name for the Group. 
  
  • This name will be used when setting up the groups options and to refer to it when updating products.
  • Remember that if an option will have different costs when associated with different products then its really two different options and they need to be in different option groups.  The name you use will help you determine which Option you are dealing with.
• Repeat as needed.  You can add Option Groups at any point; however, they must be setup before you can set up Options.
• To change the name of an Option Group, use the Search function to find it by name, make the changes and then press the Update button.  
• Do not delete an option group which contains any Options assigned to it or which is used by any product.

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Setup Options:

• Select the Option button.
• Select the Option Group from the drop down.
• Enter a number w/o a decimal point to determine the order in which the options will display.
  • As always, if you allow gaps (e.g, 10, 20, 30) you can go back and insert other options between existing ones. 
  • If the Option Group will be used in a drop down, then having as the first option describing what the choice is e.g, Shirt Size may be useful (e.g, number 1, Code ' ' i.e., a blank and text of  'Shirt Size' .
• Enter the code which you want to use to appear in the Order to tell you what the choice was (e.g, M)  This code can be the same as another option in a different Option Group.  It does need to be unique within an Option Group since this is what is actually stored in the order.
• Enter the text which will appear describing the option choice (e.g, Size Medium)
• If selecting this option enter the value in the Cost Delta line as a decimal number (e.g., one dollar is 1.00).
• Select Add.
• Repeat until all the members of a given option group have been entered.

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Background:

• Sites which track the number of items available to order do so on the basis of Product ID (e.g., SKUs).  Options are do not change the SKU of an item (see child products under products for related products which have different SKUs).  Basically, if an item has a separate SKU or it is tracked in inventory use a child product not an option.
• Options allow similar variants to be applied to items w/o defining separate products for each variant (e.g., shirt sizes).  These variants form an Option Group.
• Options can effect the unit cost (e.g., XXL jacket can cost $1.00 more than other sizes).  However, the change in price must be the same for any item using a given Option Group.  For this reason, you may have several different option groups with the same set of options.
• Options can either be unique or multiple choice.
  • A shirt can have only one size.
  • A hamburger can have onions, lettuce and or tomato.
  • Only one multiple choice option is allowed for a given product but products can be configured to support several different single choice option groups (see Product Setup for details).

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