Bundles in Sumtracker

Bundles (sometimes called kits or combos) let you sell or manage a product whose available stock is determined by the parts that make it up. Instead of tracking inventory on the bundle itself, Sumtracker automatically calculates it from each component's quantity. This is useful for gift sets, multi-packs, combos, and any scenario where one sellable unit is assembled from several underlying SKUs.

How Bundle Inventory Works

When you mark a product as a bundle and assign its components, Sumtracker calculates the bundle's available quantity based on however many complete sets can be assembled from the components on hand. You never set the bundle's inventory directly — Sumtracker derives it for you in real time.

For example, if your bundle contains 1 bottle, 1 label, and 1 cap, and you have 80 bottles, 60 labels, and 100 caps, the bundle will show 60 units available (limited by the component with the least stock).

The bundle's inventory is recalculated any time a component's stock changes — whether from a bundle sale or from selling a component individually.

When an order containing the bundle is fulfilled, Sumtracker deducts the appropriate quantities from each component automatically.

Setting Up a Bundle

A bundle is created by converting an existing SKU into a bundle and then defining its components. The bundle SKU and its component SKUs must already exist in Sumtracker.

Go to the Bundles Inventory page.
Click Create Bundle at the top of the page and select the product you want to make into a bundle.
Add each component SKU and specify the quantity required per unit of the bundle.
Save your changes.

Once components are saved, the bundle’s inventory level is immediately recalculated from the inventory of its components, and synced to your stores.

Importing Bundles in Bulk

If you have many bundles to create, you can import them using a CSV file.

Go to the Bundles Inventory page and click Import Bundles.
Review the information on the first screen to understand what the import will do.
Download the template (blank) or the sample file (with example data) to see the required structure.
Fill in the CSV with three columns: the bundle SKU, the component SKU, and the quantity of that component per bundle. Each row represents one component. If a bundle has multiple components, add a row for each component.
Save the file as a CSV and upload it in the next step of the import workflow.
Confirm the upload. Successfully imported bundles will appear in your list. If any rows have errors, you can download the error report to see what went wrong and fix them before re-importing.

For example, if you sell a “Cookie Two Pack” (made of 2 cookies) and a “Cookie and Cake Combo“ (made of 1 cookie and 1 cake), your CSV would look like this:

Copying Components from One Bundle to Another

If you're creating a larger bundle that shares components with an existing one, you can copy components across instead of re-adding them manually.

Find the bundle whose components you want to copy and open it.
Click the three-dot menu next to the bundle.
Select Copy Bundle Components.
In the pop-up, search for and select the destination bundle.
Click Copy Components. The components will be added to the selected bundle.

This is useful when building bundles of different sizes that share the same underlying SKUs.

Viewing Component Inventory

On the Bundles Inventory page, you can see how many units of a bundle are booked for open orders and how many are available to sell. If a bundle shows zero availability, you can also see at a glance which component is causing it to be unavailable.

To see the stock level of each component, click on the number shown in the Components column for that bundle. A side drawer will open showing the inventory of each component. From there, click Adjust Component Inventory if you want to make any changes to a component's stock.

Unavailable Components

You can see which components are causing a bundle to go out of stock directly on the Bundles Inventory page under the Unavailable Components column. This shows which components have insufficient stock or have reached their Close at Quantity.

Purchasing Components via Purchase Orders

When you place a purchase order for a bundled product, you need to order the components, not the bundle itself. Sumtracker does not support receiving a complete bundle and having it automatically update the component counts behind the scenes. This restriction exists to prevent unintentional inventory updates and complications with landed cost attribution.

If your supplier sends you complete finished goods that you then disassemble, you will need to receive each component individually on the PO, even if the physical shipment arrives as assembled units.

Customer-Selectable Bundles (Mix-and-Match)

Sumtracker is designed for pre-defined bundles where the components are fixed at setup time. If you sell a bundle where the customer chooses which items go into it at the time of purchase — for example, “pick any 3 from 9 color variants” — Sumtracker does not have a dedicated configuration for this.

The recommended approach is to ensure the customer’s specific selections appear as individual line items on the order in Shopify. When the order syncs to Sumtracker, each selected variant’s inventory will be deducted correctly without any special bundle setup required.

Print on Demand and Customised Products

Bundles also work well for print-on-demand or customised products, where a finished item is made from a standard base product with customisation applied per order. The customised variant is set up as a bundle, with the base product as its component. Every time the customised variant sells, Sumtracker deducts from the base product's inventory automatically. This ensures your base product stock stays accurate even when it's being consumed across multiple customised listings.

Common examples:

Customised T-shirts — each design variant (e.g. Cowboy Print T-shirt, Floral Print T-shirt) is a bundle with the Plain T-shirt as its component. Selling any variant reduces your plain t-shirt stock.
Engraved or personalised products — a personalised wooden chopping board is a bundle with the blank chopping board as its component.
Custom phone cases — each design variant is a bundle with the plain case as its component. All variants draw from the same base case inventory.
Printed mugs or bottles — each custom design is a bundle using the unprinted mug or bottle as its component.

This ensures your base product stock stays accurate even when it's being consumed across multiple customised listings.

Can I add the same product as a component to multiple bundles?

Can I add the same product as a component to multiple bundles?

Yes. The same SKU can be added as a component to as many bundles as you need. Each bundle will deduct from that component's inventory independently when it sells.

What Happens When You Delete a Bundle

Deleting a bundle converts the SKU back into a regular (non-bundle) product. Since it no longer derives its inventory from components, Sumtracker resets its own inventory for that SKU to 0, and this zero value syncs to your stores.

The product’s inventory history is preserved, so you can look back at the last recorded quantity before it was converted to a bundle and manually restore the correct stock level on the Inventory page.

If you need to undo a bundle accidentally, act quickly and check the inventory history to restore the right number.

Bundles of Bundles (Nested Bundles)

Sumtracker does not support nested bundles — a product that is already a bundle cannot be added as a component of another bundle. If you attempt this, Sumtracker will show an error.

Instead of adding the smaller bundle as a component to the bigger bundle, add its individual components directly to the larger bundle. You can do this quickly using the Copy Bundle Components feature. The smaller bundle's components will be added directly to the larger bundle, giving you a similar result without nesting.

Bundles vs Assembly

Sumtracker supports Bundles but does not support Assembly. Here's the difference between the two:

Bundles are for products you assemble at the time of shipping. The components — say, a table and a chair — are stored separately, and when an order comes in for the bundle, you pick both items and ship them together. Sumtracker calculates the bundle's available inventory from its components in real time, and deducts from each component when the order is fulfilled. No pre-assembly happens.

Assembly is a different workflow where you physically combine components into a finished product ahead of time and store that finished product separately. For example, you might assemble 100 tables from table tops and legs, and want Sumtracker to reduce the legs and table top inventory by 100 each while increasing the finished table inventory by 100. This creates a clear separation between raw material stock and finished goods stock.

Sumtracker does not currently support Assembly.

Linking Two SKUs So They Share Inventory

If you have two separate listings that should always reflect the same stock count, the simplest solution is to give both products the same SKU in your stores. Sumtracker treats matching SKUs as a single product and keeps their inventory in sync automatically.

If sharing a SKU is not possible, a workaround is to create one of the SKUs as a bundle and add the other SKU as its component (at a quantity of 1). Each sale of the bundle will then deduct from the component’s inventory, effectively linking them.

Tracking Packaging Materials and Shipping Supplies

If you include packaging materials — such as boxes, inserts, or labels — with every order, you can track their inventory using Bundles. Add the packaging SKUs as components of the product bundle. Every time an order is fulfilled, Sumtracker will automatically deduct the packaging materials along with the product, keeping your packaging inventory accurate without any manual updates.

For example, if every order of a jar includes one box and one insert card, create the jar as a bundle with the jar, box, and insert card as components. When the order ships, all three are deducted automatically.

Common Mistakes to Avoid

Deleting a bundle without noting its pre-bundle inventory. Deleting a bundle zeros out the SKU’s inventory in Sumtracker and Shopify. Before deleting, take an note of the bundle’s current inventory level so you can restore it manually.

Setting up mix-and-match (customizable) bundles as fixed bundles. If your store offers a "pick any 3 from 9 variants" style bundle where the customer chooses the contents at checkout, do not set this up as a fixed bundle in Sumtracker. A fixed bundle always deducts the same pre-defined components, so it will deduct the wrong items. Instead, make sure each customer selection comes through as an individual line item on the Shopify order. When the order syncs to Sumtracker, each chosen variant's inventory will be deducted correctly.