How to use and set up Additions

13 September 2024 | Cate

Additions are used to create items or services that are add-ons to the main product. Examples of this would be an optional gift box for mugs, engraving for jewellery or an uploaded photo for a personalised canvas print. Additions are not products that are sold in their own right.

Things to know

Additions can't have stock levels, barcodes, part numbers, cost price, HS code, warehouse location, or a downloadable file.
When an Addition is created, the values of this will remain the same on each product it's assigned to.

If you need to have add-ons with things like stock levels and barcodes, you will need to use Options and Variants instead. If you need different values for an Addition for different products, you can either create a new Addition with the same name or use Options and Variants.

Our How to create Options and Variants guide will help you to set up Options and Variants.

Setting up an Addition

The basics

To create an Addition, go to Products > Additions and click on the green plus Create New icon
Tick Active to make the Addition available once it's added to a product
Tick All Products only if you want the Addition to be automatically assigned to every product on your site
Give your Addition a name - this will appear on the website, so make sure it's short, punchy, and easy for customers to understand
Add a Reference if needed - this is helpful if you have multiple Additions with the same name

Creating the form field

Next, you need to choose what sort of form field you want for the Addition and where it will appear on the website.

Choose how you wish the Addition to display

Selectable is where you set where the form field will appear. The choices are:

Yes - will appear on both the product page and within the basket. This is the most common setting.
Product page only - will only appear on the product page, meaning the customer cannot change their mind once it's been added to the basket
Shopping basket only - will only appear within the basket page, meaning the customer adds their text or file, or makes their choice, only once the product's been added to the basket
No - won't appear on the site at all. This is rarely used but can be helpful when something is required and the customer has no choice to make.

Field Type is where you set what type of form field you need. The choices are:

Checkbox - a simple tick box, if ticked the Addition is included, if left unticked the Addition isn't included
Select field - a drop-down field, where you can add different values
Radio buttons - as Select field, but displayed as radio buttons
Option icons with select fields - as Select field, but also includes Option Icons (see below) as well
Option icons only - selectable buttons, where you can add different values
Text field (small) - a small text field for customers to type in text
Text field (large) - a large text field for customers to type in text
Password field - a small text field for customers to type in a unique password that would be used to access the product. Not used for physical products.
File upload - an upload field to allow customers to upload a file. These files will be stored in Admin > Files > uploads folder.

If you choose Select field, Radio buttons, Option icons with select fields, or Option icons only, click on Save and a new tab will appear called Option Values. Here, you can add in the different choices customers can select, as well as their own individual cost and weight. Each can be styled with colour or image swatches or simple short codes, such as XS, S, M for extra small, small and medium and these will be displayed only if the type of form field is set to Option icons with select fields or Option icons only.

Setting up Option Values and colour swatches for Additions

You can find out more about how Option Icons work in our How to display Option Icons guide.

In the Properties tab, tick Selected by Default if you want the Addition to already be added to the product and the customer would have to unselect it, if they didn't want it. Tick Required if you want the Addition to be a required field, meaning the customer would have to select or complete the Addition to be able to add the product to their basket.

Formatting your Addition

If you set the Field Type as small text field, large text field, password field, or file upload and save, a How the Addition is Formatted section will appear. Here, you have optional settings for how the field should be formatted for use. These can all be left blank or set to None, if they're not required.

Formatting your Additions

Help text - A short, punchy piece of information that sits below the field to help customers understand what they need to do. One example is, "Max. 30 characters" for a small text field.
Character limit - Sets a character limit
Conversion - The text the customer types in will automatically be converted to the set format on their order
Validation - Specifies the type of text that should be typed in

Affecting the main product

Within the Optional Values section, you can affect the cost and weight of the main product, once the Addition has been selected and added to the basket. If Select field, Radio buttons, Option icons with select fields, or Option icons only are set as the Field Type, these can be set within the Option Values tab instead, if they are different for each value, as explained above.

Setting the price, weight and more on an Addition

Additional charge (£) - The cost of the Addition, which will be added to the main product's price.
VAT exempt - If ticked, this will set the main product and the Addition to 0% vat
Free product - If ticked, this will set the main product, the addition and the delivery cost to £0.00
Additional weight (kg) - The weight of the Addition, which will be added to the main product's weight.

Advanced Additions

For most Additions the Optional Form section at the bottom of the Properties tab can be ignored. These settings are only ever used if you wish for the Addition you've created to trigger an additional form within the Checkout process.

Add an optional form to the checkout process using Additions

An example of this would be creating an Addition called "Please check this box to claim VAT relief", setting its type to Checkbox, ticking VAT Exempt and then adding a form to the Addition to allow the customer to fill in their VAT declaration form, as shown below.

Using Additions to add a VAT Exempt form to the checkout Addition form within Checkout

The form you want to add to the Addition must be created first within Pages > Custom Forms. Once this is done, you can select the form from the Include Form option in the Addition.

In the Display option, you can set how many times the form is included within the checkout. You can select from One form per order, One form per product line and One form per unit.

Lastly, you can set where you want the form to be submitted to. Choosing None will just attach the form to the order. Selecting Form default will attach the form to the order and will submit the form to what's set in the Submission to option in the form setup. The latter will provide you with a separate backup copy, which can be helpful if anything happens to the order, such as someone deleting it by accident.

Assigning Additions to Products

Once you've created your Additions, and you haven't selected All Products in the Addition setup, you'll need to assign them to the relevant products. To do this, go to Products > View and find a product you wish to assign the Addition to. Go to the Additions tab, select the Addition you want to add in the drop-down at the bottom and click Assign Addition.

Repeat the above process for each Addition you want to add. If you want to add multiple Additions to multiple products quickly, you can do a product import by having the product SKUs listed in one column and the names of the Additions you wish to add to the product in another column. When adding multiple Additions to one product, make sure the Additions' names are separated by a semi-colon. The table below shows an example of this.

For more information about product imports, have a read of our How to import and export products guide.