When adding products to a Magento store, many times you will have different variants of one product each of which you wish to track inventory for. Magento provides a way to do this using configurable products. Setting up configurable products in Magento can be a frustrating task for beginners, since there are so many steps involved, so this tutorial breaks it down in the three basic steps:

  1. Create the product attributes
  2. Create an attribute set
  3. Create the configurable product

Create the Product Attributes

Before a configurable product is created, you must first create the configurable attributes. For this example we will be creating a customizable coffee mug which can come in one of two types– right-handed or left-handed. So the attributes we must create are mug color and mug type.
To create an attribute, log in to your Magento admin panel and choose Catalog -> Attributes -> Manage Attributes. You will now see the list of default attributes. Click the button Add New Attribute.
You will now see the form pictured below. We will fill out the attribute properties as follows:

Now click on Manage Label/Options in the left menu and specify a title for the attribute. For this example we will use “Mug Type” as our attribute title. Now in the lower form you must add options by clicking the Add Option button and specifying the name for the option under the Admin column. The figure below shows the attribute title filled in as well as two options created. Notice that we have also specified the order of the options and which one is the default selected.

After completing the above click Save Attribute and you will be ready for step 2.

Create an attribute set

To create an attribute set, browse to Catalog -> Attributes -> Manage Attribute Sets and click Add New Set. In the first form that appears, type a name for your attribute set and hit Save Attribute Set. For our example we will name our attribute set “Mug Options.” You will now be given a screen like below. Under the Groups column click Add New to add a new attribute group. You can name this group whatever you wish. Now drag the attribute you created in step 1 (it should be in the column under Unassigned Attributes) into your newly created attribute group. When you have completed this step your screen should look like the figure below. Now hit Save Attribute Set to save the attribute set.

Create the configurable product

Now you are ready to create the configurable product. Go to Catalog -> Manage Products and click the Add Product button. For the Attribute Set dropdown, select the attribute set you just created. In the Product Type dropdown, select Configurable Product. Hit Continue. Now you will be given a list of checkboxes to select the attributes you want to configure for the new product. In our example we will check “Mug Type” and hit continue. Now you will be given the normal new product form. Fill out all of the required fields as you would with a simple product  (If you have never done this before this post is a tutorial on how to do so).

Once you have filled out all of the required fields, you must now create simple products for each combination of configuration options. Magento provides an easy way to do this. Click Associated Products in the left column. Under the box labeled Create Simple Associated Product, click Create Empty and a popup will open up for you to create a new associated product. The form in the popup will be identical to a simple product form with the exception of one item in the left menu– Configurable options. Fill out the required fields in the popup as you normally would for a simple product. In our example our first associated product will be titled “Right-handed Mug.” Note that if you do not want the individual associated products to be visible on the frontend of the site in addition to the configurable version, in the General options select “Not Visible Individually” in the Visibility dropdown.

When you have completed all of the required fields, click the Configurable Options tab in the left menu and you will get a form like the figure below.

For the first associated product we will select “Right-Handed” and hit Save to save this product. Now in the original browser window hit Create Empty again and repeat the process for the Left-Handed mug. Once you have completed this process for each combination of options, look at the table at the bottom of the original browser window. All of the newly added products should now be visible there like in the figure below.

Now by checking the box beside a product you can assign each product variant an additional price to be added to the base price for the configurable product. Finally click the Save button and find your product in the frontend, and your new products detail page should like like our example below. Happy configuring!

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