Product Variants
Variants are the actual buyable items inside a configurable product. A t-shirt with three sizes and four colors has twelve variants. This page covers how variants are created, managed, and stocked.
How variants relate to products
Commerce Kitty has two product types: simple and configurable. Simple products are sold as-is. Configurable products are containers that hold variants. The configurable product carries the shared information (name, description, photos) and each variant carries the buyable details (specific code, price, stock).
A customer never buys a configurable product directly. They buy one of its variants. When you list "Cotton T-Shirt, Medium, Blue" on Etsy, that listing is tied to one specific variant.
Where to find variants
Variants live inside a product. Open Catalog → Products, click into a configurable product, and you will see a Variants section. From there you can list, create, edit, and delete variants individually, or generate them in bulk from product options.
Generating variants from options
The fastest way to create variants is to define product options first, then let Commerce Kitty generate every combination for you.
For a t-shirt with a Size option (S, M, L) and a Color option (Red, Blue, Green), generation creates nine variants automatically: one for each size and color pair. You can then go in and adjust prices, codes, or stock per variant if any of them differ from the defaults.
Generation only creates the combinations that do not already exist. Running it again after adding a new option value will fill in just the new combinations without touching the existing ones.
Creating variants manually
You can also create variants one at a time. This is useful when not every combination makes sense (for example, a Size option with values S, M, L, but you only sell Red in Medium). Click New Variant from the variants list and fill in the form.
Variant fields
Code
The unique identifier for this specific variant. Like the parent product code, this should match the SKU you use on your sales channels. Each variant must have its own code.
Name
A human-readable label for the variant. Often a combination of the option values, like "Medium / Blue". Commerce Kitty can build this automatically when you generate variants from options.
Position
Controls the order in which variants appear in lists and on listing pages. Lower numbers come first. Variants without a position fall to the end.
Enabled
Whether this specific variant is active. A disabled variant is hidden from new orders and will not push to channels. Use this to retire a size or color without deleting it.
Option values
The combination of product option values that defines this variant. For a t-shirt, this is something like Size: Medium, Color: Blue. The fields shown here depend on which options are configured on the parent product.
Stocking variants
Each variant has its own stock level, tracked per inventory source. Add stock from the variant page using the Add Stock action. Specify the inventory source and the quantity, and Commerce Kitty creates a stock record for that variant.
When orders come in, Commerce Kitty decrements stock for the specific variant that was sold, not for the parent product. This is how variant-level inventory sync prevents overselling.
Variants and listings
Each variant can have its own listings on different channels. The Etsy listing for "Cotton T-Shirt, Medium, Blue" is one listing for one variant. The Shopify listing for the same item is another. Commerce Kitty links them together so a sale on either platform decrements the same stock.