Updating Configurable Products

[swbouton]

Hello.

My first (and only) Magento site went up about a year ago. Recently the store owner game me several pages of updates that has become very time-consuming. I hope to be informed of a better way.

For example, last year she sold a hat that came in 6 colors, 3 choices of monogram typeface and 5 different thread colors. This year that same “hat” comes in 6 colors, not all the same as last year, the same 3 choices of monogram typeface, but now 9 different thread colors. That produces 162 unique, simple products.

The configurable product used last year will no longer work because it cannot pick up the attribute changes, so I have to start that product from scratch beginning with modifying the attributes, making a new attribute set (I suspect) and creating a new configurable product. Last I go through the repetitive process of creating each simple product.  

The “hat” is one of about 9 different products with similar stories to them.

I am considering buying some kind of software that will mass produce simple products from configurable products, but this is an annual activity for one web site, so it has to be cost-justified.

Is there a better way to do this?

Any ideas? Thank you for your help.

Steve

[Store_Manager]

Hi there,
In case the unique simple products belonging to configurable, you can disable them and create new associated products on the basis of new attribute values you add. But 162 unique variations of simple goods might be a challenge.

In your post you mentioned that  you might be interested in the extension to automatically generate all the combinations of associated simple products and assigned them to configurable. 'Store Manager for Magento' software does it basically in 2 clicks.
You just select on the basis of which attributes to create products and generate them in a few moments. Here is tutorial with video and screen-shots -

https://www.mag-manager.com/useful-articles/how-to/how-to-create-all-combinations-of-simple-products...

The extesion is pad, but in case you need the task to be done once, you can download free 2-week version from the link in my signature.

[CreativeWest]

We can refer you to a solution that take Excel spreadsheets and auto creates configurables. There are obviously other solutions available but it doesn't sound like you want to manage products externally, otherwise you need to use something like Magmi to format the datasets and load manually.

[swbouton]

Thank you for this informaiton.  I will try it tomorrow.

[swbouton]

I would appreciate the referral to the Excel possibility.  Thank you for your help.