Calculating Pricing with Option Add-Ons

We are selling custom books with PowerStore. There are different pricing options that we need to offer. Here is what we want to do:
1. user picks a size, ie> 5x7 photobook
2. user picks their binding option, hard cover or saddle stitch
3. user tells us how many pages are in the book.

price per book is = book size + option uplift + (# pages * price/page)

My thought was to add to the options table an OptionPrice. I also was thinking of adding a ProductPagePrice in the products table for the price/page. But I am confused on how to caclutate the price in the products detail page to automatically reflect the user's selection/input. Can you help me with that?

Also, when I go through the ADMIN option to add options, it looks like is it creating UNIQUE records in many tables (OptionGroups, Options, ProductOptions and Products). I would have thought that the ADMIN tools would be leveraging the value of duplicating unnecessary records in these tables. For instance, when I add "saddle stitch" to a 5x7 book, the admin tools are creating another "saddle stitch" option record again for a 8x10 book. Am I doing something wrong?

The PowerStore is designed to handle options for products as unique products, so you are not doing anything wrong. When it comes to creating the scenario that you presented it is not something that is supported within PowerStore. This would require you to come up with logic to get this in place as well as make the necessary updates to the code.

One way you could do something like this is to have an extra options table that has prices for these options as well as the item that corresponds. With this table in place you could add to the admin back end to update this table and add to it.

For the front end you would need to have a recordset that is filtered on the item, you can have a select list with the available options listed. If you modify your cart to include columns for the options and other values you can create a calculation that can determine the price for the bood based on the price of the item, plus the option then do the multiplication for the pages.

Making the updates like this would require you to make use of eCart and DataAssist. There will also be some hand coding involved to get it the way you would like it.

Hi Eric, I have all three programs, Data Assist, Ecart and Powerstore. I am selling jackets, one example, S-L are all the same price $69.99 while, XL, 2XL, and 3XL are incrementally more by $5. Before reading your post I thought to myself, I know I have to create another table in options, for the pricing. Now with Data Assist I know I can do the filtering you spoke of but how do I use Ecart in this senario?
Thanks I really need help with this.

I will cover an overview of how you can add in the options and have them affect the price. Please respond with any questions that you have about any part of this and I will be glad to give you some specific detail for those parts.

First, you must have a column in your cart to record the size, and if you want to maintain the price of the size separately from the price of the item you will need another column for the sizePrice.

Once you have the columns in place you will need to ensure that you have a page with the add to cart on it to add an item to the cart. On this page you will need to add a recordset that selects all the sizes for that item. You will add a size select list to the form then bind the size for the label and the id for the value.

Next you will need to add another recordset on the page that will be just like your first size recordset but it will be filtered on the posted size id from the newly added size select list.

Once you have all of this in place you can then add values for the size and sizePrice to your add to cart server behavior. If you want to record the size and price for the size separately from the price of the item you will need to bind the sizePrice column with the price column from your newly filtered size recordset. If you want to just add the price to the items price you can just add in the size price from the recordset along with the already bound price for the item.

Please post back with any questions that you have about any part of this and I will be glad to help you with whatever I can.

Are there any tutorials on how to achieve this?

For example, I have a catgory, shirts, size small - large are 19.99
but XL - XXL are $25.99

This has to be back end work to options_Add.php page

And then obviously it should work fine when the option is selected for the cart.
Please help. Thank you for all your help.

Unfortunately there is no tutorial for this. I have reviewed the steps that will need to be taken to accomplish this, what point have you gotten up to in the process? Are you experiencing any errors or do you have any questions about the part you are on?

Eric, I have powerstore, are you outlining steps for me to create another cell in the options table, called "sizePrice" if so not a problem and I'm sure it will be an int value 3 or should I make it a float? Not sure about that yet.

Then I have to know how to address this from the backend admin section of my powerstore, and then how to create the mysql query to search that field. Im sure I can just do a record set with a filter to accomplish that. But my question is how do I address this on the backend of the admin section.
Thanks

I think that we should start over on this one so that we are clear on the situation and the solution that will be needed.

If you are working with PowerStore you can setup your products to include options. When you add in the options for a product you can then go and update that product for that option choice by choosing the option value at the top of the update page. When you select the particular option for that item you can update the price of the item, this will only adjust the price for this item & option combo.

I think that this might fit your needs without any further customization. If you have tried it this way and did not get the proper result please let us know. If you are wanting to do something more than this then we can continue on that part.

Hi Eric, yes I think I wasn't very clear on what I needed accomplished. I know how to add options, but when I add options I can only make one price for my product. For example I add a hunting shirt, the Small-Large product sells for $19.99 but if my customer needs an XL, XXL or XXXL the price goes up, $22.99, $25.99, $27.99

I want to know how I can accomplish this in the backend to reflect on my cart page, for "ONE" product. I know I can just break them up into multiple products but that makes the work much more time consuming. I hope this is much clearer.

From the perspective of the user visiting the store and the admin managing the items in the back end you would see a single item that has multiple options. Most of the items options would be the same price, but a few will differ.

You can try this yourself as a test create a new item. Add an option type and make two option values for it. Now when you update that item select the first option choice and go to the price then set it to something simple like 10. After updating the item go back into this item to update it and select the second option. Now go to the price and update it to 11.

When you view this item on the front end you will have the choices for the options you specified. When you select the first option the price of the item will be 10, when you select the second option it will make the price 11.

In the background there are multiple products being created to handle all of the options but from the perspective of the user and the admin you would only see it as a single item with multiple options that affect the price. If this is not what you require please describe what you need in comparison to this so that I have a better reference for how this should be accomplished.