Overview

An attribute combination is a way of using a different SKU, stock count, set of images, and for certain MIS plugins, a different MIS mapping, all based on the user's chosen attributes.

For example, if you had a T-shirt stock item that came in two colours (red, blue), and you offered three sizes for each(small, medium, large), then logistically, you have six different items you are storing:

1. Small red
2. Medium red
3. Large red
4. Small blue
5. Medium blue
6. Large blue

Naturally, each of these are different stock items and would have their own SKUs and stock qty, so rather than make six different products in Catfish, you can use attribute combinations to have a single T-shirt product, which in turn has six different attribute combinations assigned.

Pre-requisites

For this article, the product "T-shirt" has already been set up, and has had the "Size" and "Colour" attributes assigned to it.

Also, the "Colour" attribute has the options "Red" and "Blue" assigned, whilst the "Size" attribute has "Small", "Medium", and "Large" assigned:

Creating the combinations

1. Edit the product variant and navigate to Product variant attributes -> Attribute combinations:
2. Click "Add combination"
   
3. In the window that pops up, select the attributes that you want to set up a combination for, and then configure the fields accordingly.
   In this example, the stock for a red t-shirt has been set to "500" and the SKU has been set to "TSHIRT-R_S"
   
4. Click "Add combination" then the popup will close and you will see the new attribute combination you have just created
   
   
   
   
5. Repeat steps 2-4 for each desired combination.

After following the steps above, the product's combinations now looks like this:

Now, when the user orders this product, the SKU code and stock qty used will be taken from the combinations, instead of the product variant.

In order to add a different product image against a specific attribute combination, click 'Edit' against your desired attribute combination.

Then in the edit popup window, select the images tab at the top.

From here you can click on the 'Upload a file' select your file and then click on the 'Add product picture' button. 

This image will then be displayed on the product landing page when that attribute combination is selected by the user.

CSV Import

Importing

You can create and update these combinations through a CSV import. The controls for this can be found at the end of the attribute combinations tab:

This CSV must follow a strict column structure, and so the header structure for the CSV must be:

CombinationId, StockQuantity, SKU, AllowOutOfStockOrders

After these columns, Catfish expects to have a column dedicated for each attribute e.g. Colour, Size. The Mis Externals Id columns are optional and can be removed if necessary.

When performing the CSV import to update existing combinations, you can target the combinations either by the combination ID, or the combination SKU. The new ID will be automatically generated when you create each combination, and the SKU will be whatever you configured when setting up the combination.

Please Note: When using 'By ID' you will need to add a representative value for all new records/attribute combinations and the system will create its own ID for them when they are created. For example instead of leaving the ID fields blank, put the ID as 1, 2, 3 etc for each new attribute combination.

You can select which one you want to target in the CSV with the dropdown highlighted below:

Exporting

You can get a CSV export of the existing combinations by clicking the "Export to CSV" button highlighted below. This can be particularly useful when you are planning to update the combinations en-masse, as you can simply export the CSV, make the changes, and then re-import it.