Quantities "on hand" adaptating when variants are a sub-product of the main product

Here is the case:

Producer X sells sausages (big sausages, 700g each).
He has only 8 in stock in total
We want in our hub to propose an option for people to buy 1/2 a sausage, so we create 2 variants, one for 1 sausage, the other for 1/2 sausage. We would like the quantity on hand for each variant to adapt automatically when 1/2 a sausage or 1 sausage is sold.
How can we do that?

Today what we do is splitting the quantity on hand between the two variants (4 full + 8 half = 8 full, but as you see in the image the info 12 is not good…), and we wil need to adjust manually in case one of the option gets sold out…
Any idea how to manage that @danielle or @sstead?
Ping @Olivier for info.

This is definitely a logical feature and you’re right, currently variants that only differ in the unit size/quantity will not draw from the same ‘on hand value’. This same issue arises if you want to have bulk deals like 1 lemon for $1, but three lemons for $2.5. I’ve changed this topic to a wishlist, and I’d encourage you link it to your Norway Backlog page.

We had again a user today (after some others we didn’t mention here) who are facing this issue, especially hubs/farmers who sell to wholesalers in big quantities and in small to individuals but would like both variants to take from the same stock as they have one stock of the product regardless the conditioning per Kg or 5Kg for instance. I’m wondering if there is a way to move that forward before we implement the product chain logic (which will take months… and stock will only be tackle on further iterations). Shall I put that as a voting candidate so we can prioritize and see what quick win we could find (if we decide to prioritize ?). @Rachel and maybe @sauloperez and @luisramos0 who have a bit dived into the product chain thing, what do you think ? (and others if you want of course ;-))

I am not seeing a quick win here. it’s a tricky one…
what I think we can do is to put this on top of product chain backlog and start product chain by implementing this feature.

as a user, how would you want to make this happen? a field at product level? “variants are sub-products”?
We would need to handle quantities and weights and calculations, right? if you sell 1/2 sausage is different from selling 1/3 sausage, the system would have to take the appropriate amount from the product stock.

Plus we need the capacity to turn this on or off in some way. Some hubs/farms sell pre-packaged items - so they know they have 10 x 1 kg bags and 5 x 50 kg bags on hand, and they don’t want to re-package. So they want the stock of 10 and the stock of 5 to be separate - so operate like different products. But other times - as discussed above - the product is all in one bulk bin and the farmer or hub will package it based on the orders. So they want to list differently sized variants, see how many of each sell, and then package. But they don’t want to oversell the total quantity available.