Variants : Stock per size and the way it looks on my website

[Jeroentje]

Hi everyone,

I am new on this forum and I am making a website with Virtuemart 3 and Joomla 3.6.0

I have a question about keeping track of my stock and the way the products are showing up on my website. I hope someone can help me. Sorry for the long story ;-)

Let's say I only want to sell white T-shirts in 4 sizes (S, M, L and XL). No extra options; just this.
I want to keep track of my stock for each size (for example S: 10 pcs, M: 20 pcs, L: 30pcs  and XL: 40 pcs).  Total stock is 100 pcs.
If I understand correctly there a 2 ways of doing this. This is what I did.

Method 1 (Size variant):
Custom Field  – create new
•   Custom Field Type: String
•   Title: Size
•   Card Attribute: Yes 
•   Card Input : Yes
•   Description: T-shirt Size
•   Save
Then I go to the Products Page and choose my white T-shirt.
•   Product Status Tab
•   In Stock: 100
•   Custom Field Tab
•   Custom Field Type : Size
•   In the field I added the 4 sizes and fill in the prize of each size ($0 no extra charge)
•   Save

This is how I want it to look like on my website. The T-shirt is shown on my home page and you can put in your cart right away.  But it seems I can only keep track of the total stock (100 pcs) and not the individual stock per size.

Method 2: (Parents and Children – Multi Variant)
•   Custom Field Type: Multi Variant
•   Title: Please Pick
•   Card Attribute: Yes 
•   Card Input : Yes
•   Save
Then I go to the Products Page and choose my white T-shirt.
•   Product Status Tab
•   In Stock: 100
•   Custom Field Tab
•   Custom Field Type : Please Pick
•   In the field I select : Use custom table and I named it Size
•   In the field I added the 4 sizes 
•   In the field New Ramification I added 4 New Child products (S,M,L,XL)
•   In the Product page of each Child Product I added the stock for each size (S: 10, M: 20, L: 30, XL: 40).
•   So now I see the total stock of the Parent (100) and the individual stock of the Children

On my home page the white T shirt is shown and you can pick your size. But when you do so...a new webpage will open, named for example ' White T-shirt Size XL'. In this extra page you can put it in your cart. I want to get rid of this extra page. All sizes are the same colour; so there is no need for this extra page.
I want to combine the advantage of the Size Variant (choose size and straight to the cart) with the advantage of the Multi Variant (stock per size). Is this possible ? Am I doing something wrong ?

I hope someone can help me out, cause this issue is driving me crazy 

Best regards,
Jeroen

[balai]

Welcome to the forum.

If you want to keep track of your stock your way to go is the 2nd.

Or you can also use a free 3rd party plugin which does that, with some extra features.
https://breakdesigns.net/extensions/stockable-custom-fields

[Studio 42]

Use Method 2: (Parents and Children – Multi Variant) but parent as option(orderable) so Parent is an option. Eg. size S.

[Jeroentje]

@ Balai and Studio 42 Thank you very much for your answer and help.

So I will stick to method nr 2.

First I want to try toe set the parents as an option (orderable). When and where can I do this ? It looks like it's nowhere to be found. 

Can you please help me a bit further ?

Best regards,
Jeroen

[Studio 42]

Use a custom field > type : generic child variant and at it to your parent product. After you can see this setting when you add this custom field in the product