Build bundles & kits in the Workshop
A bundle and a kit are both products made up of other products — their components. A bundle is a virtual grouping that holds no stock of its own and expands into its components at sale time; a kit is assembled from component stock into a countable unit. Either way, the job in the catalog is the same: tell SKU.io which products go into it and how many of each. The Bundle & Kit Workshop is the dedicated place to do that. (For the difference between the two types and when to use each, see Kits vs bundles.)
This guide covers configuring components in the Workshop and every rule the Workshop enforces. For how components affect price, see Bundle pricing & revenue proration; for a field-by-field lookup of the component record, see the Kit & bundle component reference.
Before you begin
- You need permission to update products.
- The product you're configuring must already be a bundle or kit. Create one from the Create a product flow (which lets you pick components inline while creating), or convert an existing product to a bundle or kit.
- The products you plan to add as components must already exist in the catalog.
Open the Workshop
From the Products list, open the Bundle & Kit Workshop. It opens on the Bundles & Kits tab — a two-panel screen:
- Left panel — the list of every bundle and kit in your catalog (archived products are excluded). Each row shows the product's type and its component count, and is marked configured once it has at least one component or unconfigured while it has none.
- Right panel — the component editor for whichever product you select.
A second tab, Conversion, is for batch-converting standard products into bundles or kits and is covered in Convert & auto-detect product types.
Find a bundle or kit in the list
Use the list controls to narrow it down:
| Control | What it does |
|---|---|
| Search | Matches on SKU or name |
| Type | Filter to Bundle or Kit |
| Status | Filter to Configured (has components) or Unconfigured (none yet) |
| Sort | Order by SKU, name, type, created or updated date |
The Unconfigured status filter is the fastest way to find bundles and kits that still need components — a bundle or kit with zero components can't be sold or assembled, so clearing that list is the goal.
Add components to a bundle or kit
- Select the bundle or kit in the left panel. Its current components load in the editor, along with a Buildable Quantity and Total Unit Cost summary at the bottom.
- In the Search products to add as component box, type at least two characters. Matching products appear in the dropdown, each tagged with its type.
- Click a product to add it. It's added with a quantity of 1 and saved immediately — there's no separate save button.
- Adjust the Qty field on any row to change how many of that component the bundle or kit contains. The change auto-saves a moment after you stop typing.
- Remove a component with the ✕ button on its row. That also saves immediately.
Each save is a full sync: the Workshop stores exactly the set of components shown in the editor. Any component you removed is deleted from the product, and any you added is created — you never need to "apply" changes separately.
The Available column shows each component's available stock, and Default Cost shows its unit cost. The summary line reports:
- Buildable Quantity — how many complete bundles/kits you could make from current component stock (see Out-of-stock components below).
- Total Unit Cost — the sum of each component's unit cost × its quantity.
The rules the Workshop enforces
The Workshop validates every change as you make it. If a change would break one of the rules below, it's rejected and the reason is shown — nothing partial is saved.
At least one component
A bundle or kit must always have at least one component. You can't save an empty component set — attempting to remove the last component (or save an empty list) is rejected with "A bundle product must have at least one component." (or "…kit product…"). The same rule applies when you create a bundle or kit and when you convert a standard product into one: you must supply components in the same step, or the conversion is blocked with a prompt to add components first.
Only standard products and kits can be components
A component must be a standard product or another kit. You can't nest a bundle, matrix, blemished or manufactured product inside a bundle or kit. In the Workshop's search box, only standard products and kits appear as choices, so you won't normally hit this — but if a disallowed product reaches the save (for example via import), it's rejected with a message naming the offending SKU, for example "ABC-123 is not a standard or kit product and cannot be bundled."
Quantity must be at least 1
Every component needs a quantity of 1 or more. A quantity below 1 is rejected with "Component <SKU> must have a quantity of at least 1." The Qty field works in whole numbers and won't accept a value under 1, so this rule mainly guards against bad values arriving from an import or the API.
No duplicates
Adding the same product twice doesn't create two rows — the Workshop collapses it onto the existing component (the quantity you set wins). If you try to add a product that's already a component, the Workshop tells you it's already there.
A product can't contain itself
You can't add a bundle or kit as a component of itself. This is blocked both as you pick in the editor and on save, with "<SKU> cannot be added as a component of itself."
No circular references
For kits, you also can't create a loop: if Kit A already contains Kit B, you can't add Kit A as a component of Kit B. The Workshop walks the whole nested tree before saving and blocks the change with "<SKU> contains <SKU> as a component, creating a circular reference." This protects assembly and inventory calculations from an unresolvable cycle.
Nested kits
A kit may list another kit as one of its components. When SKU.io needs the true bill of materials — to value the kit, or to work out how many you can build — it flattens the nesting: each nested kit expands into its own components and the quantities multiply down the tree.
Example: Kit A contains Kit B with quantity 2, and Kit B contains component X with quantity 3. Flattened, Kit A needs 6 of component X (2 × 3).
The Buildable Quantity shown in the Workshop already accounts for this nesting — it flattens nested kits to their base products and evaluates availability per warehouse. Nesting is bounded (the system stops expanding at a depth of 10 levels) and the circular-reference guard keeps the tree finite. For a deeper look at how nested components resolve, see the Kit & bundle component reference.
Out-of-stock components
Buildable Quantity is limited by the scarcest component. SKU.io works it out per warehouse — a bundle or kit can only be built from component stock co-located in the same warehouse — by dividing each component's available stock in that warehouse by the quantity the bundle/kit needs; the smallest result across all components is how many you can build there, and the per-warehouse figures are summed for the total shown. So a single out-of-stock component drops Buildable Quantity to 0 in that warehouse and becomes the bottleneck — even if every other component is plentiful.
The two product types behave differently downstream:
- A kit is assembled from co-located component stock. Assembly is gated on live, locked on-hand stock at the point of assembly — not the cached display number — so you can't over-assemble beyond what's really available.
- A bundle holds no stock of its own, so an out-of-stock component doesn't stop the bundle from being ordered. On a sales order the bundle expands into its component lines, and a short component simply backorders on its own line.
For per-warehouse stock, buildable numbers, and how kits are assembled from components, see View a product's stock across warehouses and the Inventory guide.
Change a product's type from the editor
The component editor's type chip lets you switch a product between Bundle, Kit and Standard without leaving the Workshop. Converting back to Standard keeps the component configuration (it's restored if you convert back), but a product that has sales or assembly history can't have its type changed — the Workshop explains why and offers to show the restricting movements. Full detail is in Convert & auto-detect product types.
Next steps
- Kits vs bundles — which type to use.
- Bundle pricing & revenue proration — how component pricing and revenue split work.
- Kit & bundle component reference — the component record's fields and validation.
- Convert & auto-detect product types — turn standard products into bundles or kits, singly or in a batch.
- Product types explained — the full set of product types and what each is for.