Bundles bigger than 20 components, or how do I make a bicycle from inventory?

[Cool_1861]

I run a bike shop and offer custom-built bicycles.  I have a few example bikes on the salesfloor for sale, but I'm not sure how to create these as sellable items in my Square inventory.  I can't use "bundles," because there are way more than 20 individually inventoried components involved.  But if I just create a SKU for the bike out of thin air, it won't represent my real costs going into that final product, and it won't pull stock from each inventoried item as it should.  What should I do? Thanks!

[Cool_1861]

As a quick follow-up: I've had the thought to create each bike as a Project and leave the invoice open, then assign it to whichever customer wants to buy the bike.  The significant drawback from this method is I can't list the bike online as part of my ecom offerings. 

[Eddiemunster]

Hi @Cool_1861 can I ask how you currently work out the items for a bike.  For example if someone wanted to go into your site and order a bike, do they choose a frame first, then forks, then brakes, then pedals etc? If that's the case could you create a combo?  You would have to have each individual items set up with a price for each before you create the combo. For eample if the customer has a choice of 5 differeent frames then each frame would have to be setup individually first as an item.  Then when all the components are set up as items you could group them into combos.  When setting up the combo you can have Different component groups under the "Build the combo" section such as Frame, and Forks, and select the items that the customer can choose from.  You will end up with a Combo Choice group named Frames with all of the frames a customer can choose from and a Combo Choice group named Forks with all the items the customer can choose from.  If they choose a more expensive frame it will add the additional cost difference to the price of the overall item.  As they work through the selection process they would then Build a price for their unique bike.  I would suggest an assembly fee would be included for you to assemble and ready the bike for pickup.  Now I'm not sure how many "Combo Choice" groups you can have but hopefully that would work for you.  Happy to help you set this up if you need further help.

[Cool_1861]

Hmm interesting, thanks for this!  To clarify a bit: I'm not currently trying to create an online shopping experience wherein the customer can configure their own bike.  Rather, I want to be able to list the bikes that I myself have assembled from many (30 or more) discrete parts which each live as items in my inventory.  

It's tempting to just create an item called "Blue Bicycle, Size Large" for instance, and to price it however I want.  I could then make inventory adjustments for each component that went into that build.  The problem with that, as I understand it, is that I would not be recording the cost of all those individual parts.  Instead, a handlebar would just disappear from my inventory....basically my COGS would be significantly thrown off/underreported.  So this is a problem for in-person sales as well as listing online.

Thanks for any further thoughts on this!