Creating Configurable Products in Magento 2

In Magento 1 creating a configurable product was a time consuming job. We made this a little easier with our Easy Configurable Products Matrix extension. In Magento 2 the proces of creating Configurable Products has been improved significantly. In this short tutorial we will show you step-by-step how to create configurable products in Magento 2.

What is a Configurable Product?

You will probably have shopped for clothes sometimes. Clothes come with multiple attributes, such as size and color. To sell such products and let your customers select proper size and color in Magento 2 you use Configurable Products. Custom Options for size and color is also possible, however, if you decide to do so, you will not be able to control the stock for each product variation.

For example: You have 8 red t-shirts, and 16 blue t-shirts. With configurable products, Magento 2 knows precisely when each variation runs out. With simple products with custom options, you will have to continuously monitor each order and make manual adjustments to the product options. This is the main advantage of configurable products: Independent product variation inventory management.

How does it work? A configurable product is often called parent, because you assign simple products (children) to it. These simple products act as the configurable product variations. Each color is a separate simple product, that is assigned to the configurable one. Whenever customer selects a variation and adds it to the cart, they actually purchase a simple product that has been assigned to the configurable.

How to create a configurable product in Magento 2?

Creating a configurable product in Magento 2 is basically the same as with other product types, with the exception of Configurations Section. In this section you assign or create simple products that will be the children of the Configurable Product you are creating.

Step 1 - Creating the configurable product

Proceed to the Catalog > Products and click Add Product > Configurable Product.

* IMAGE *

Step 2 - Creating the simple associated products

Fill in all the attributes just like the way you create a simple or other product. Then proceed to the Configurations Section and click on the Create Configurations button.

2.1 Select the attributes

After you have done that you will see a list of all the attributes that can be used to create the associated simple products. Select the ones that you want to use.

* IMAGE *

Click Next to select or create the attribute values

2.2 Attribute values

* IMAGE *

Here you can select all the variations that will be available for your configurable product. By slecting all the variants that are available you will create a set of simple products. Let's say yopu select 3 colors and 5 sizes. This will result in a total of 15 products (5x3).

2.3 Images and price

Here you set how you want images, prices and quantity applied to the created Configurable Product variations (simple products).

• Apply a single set of images/prices/quantity to all SKUs – if you know that you have a single number for all the values.
• Apply unique images/prices/quantity by attribute to each SKU – if you have different prices for different attribute values;
• Skip images/price/quantity at this time – if you want to skip this section, and apply images/price/quantity once the variations are actually created, from the product catalog.

Click Next

2.4 Summary

Here you will see an overview of which Configurable Product variations (Simple Products) will be created.

Make sure that everything is Ok in this section. If you are not satisfied with the created products, you can always click Back button, to return to the previous steps. If everything is correct – hit Generate Products button.

Step 3 - Simple products are created

Now you will see the just created set of simple products that will beassigned to your Configurable Product. These variations are not visible individually, meaning they will not be available separately in your product catalog. Instead, these products are used to add options to the Configurable Product. While still at the Configurable Product creation screen, you can quickly edit variation names, SKU, price, quantity, weight, images, or if required remove them and create new variations.

Step 4 - Saving the configurable product

When you are ready with the variations click Save button to create the Configurable Product. If you have added new attributes and values, you will be asked what do you want to do with these new attributes.

* IMAGE *

That is all there is! You have just created a Configurable Product. How does that show up on the frontend and what things can you do to improve?

But what can we do yo get the most out of your Configurable Products

Magento 2 by default doesn't handle switching of the Product attributes like name, sku, description etc. very well and also it is a strugglke to setup Tier Pricing since you will have to set that up at the simple product. This means you will have to go through each simple product to make use of the Tier Pricing functionality.

Well there is only 1 thing you need to do to get the most out of your configurable product and that is to install our Magento 2 Configurable Products extension.