Suggested and Required Addons – Event Rental Systems

Note: you can watch tutorial videos by clicking here, or you can follow the step-by-step instructions below.

There are two types of Add-ons that can be assigned to items:

1. Suggested Addons are intended for upselling. They help increase your overall sales and average order price. Only a single Suggested Add-on can be attached to an item. They generally include the text, “People who ordered this have also ordered the following:”, but you can customize the display text in the Description field (see below). Items of your choice appear below, after an item has already been added to the cart, with the “Add to Cart” option.

2. Required Addons force a customer to add an additional item or items to the cart (IMPORTANT NOTE: sometimes the "item" can be a negative choice like "No thanks;" it doesn't necessarily mean the customer has to add something to their order. It's called a "Required Addon" because the customer has to answer the question in order to proceed with their order, as opposed to "Suggested Addons," where the customer can simply ignore the prompt entirely if they choose). They're intended for situations where an item comes with another item, such as, for example, if your company includes a free bottle of Sno Cone Syrup with each Sno Cone Machine rental, so your customer will be prompted to add their free flavor.

Though Suggested Addons are the most common way to upsell, you can also upsell using multiple Required Add-ons chained together on an item, which is covered below in the "Using Multiple Required Addons for Upselling" section of this tutorial.

Note: Required Addons take precedence over Suggested Addons, so any time an item is using a Required Addon, in order to still upsell, you have to attach the Suggested Addon to the items in the Required Addon. The Suggested Addon that displays is always based on the last item added to the cart, which, in the case of an item using a Required Addon, will always be one of the items in the Required Addon itself.

For example, if you use a Required Add-on for your Sno Cone Machine which prompts your customer to pick a free Sno Cone Syrup flavor, and the choices are "Lemon-Lime," "Grape," and "Cherry," you could then assign a Suggested Add-on to each of those three Items, so, when the customer has chosen their free flavor, they'll see a new Suggested Add-on.

To begin, navigate to Admin>Products>Items. Add-ons are created using your existing inventory. If you would like to create a list of cotton candy flavors or bounce house banners, for example, then they must be added to your inventory. Generally, these items are hidden from customer view by placing them in the “Hidden Category”. They only appear when attached as an Add-on.

Once your add-on items are in Inventory, navigate to Admin>Products>Addons.

Creating Addons

Once your items are created, navigate to Admin>Products>Addons.
Click “Add New” or edit an existing addon.
Fill in the fields using the information below.
Click “Submit” to commit your changes.

Name: Used to attach an Add-on to an item. Clear naming conventions help to organize your inventory.

Description: Contains the text visible to your customer before, or above, their selection.

Items: Use the dropdown boxes to select which items appear in the Add-on from your existing inventory. Items are listed in alphabetical order. Continue to use the “Add More >>>” button to add more options.

Cost: This box overrides the original cost of the item. When blank, the price of the item is inherited from the Admin>Products>Items page. Placing a “20”, for example, in the “Cost” box will set the price of this item to $20, but only within this Add-on.

Exclude Parent Item for Required Addons: Only used in rare circumstances. The default should remain set to “No”. When enabled, selecting an “Add-on” will replace the original item selection in the cart. For example, you may show a generic bounce house with no banner. The add-on shows a list of available bounce houses with banners. When a choice is made, the original bounce house is replaced with the selected banner bounce house.

Suggested Addon Example

Here is an example of a Suggested Add-on:

Once your addon is created, it needs to be attached:

Navigate to Admin>Products>Items.
Click the name of the Item you wish to attach the Add-on to.
Scroll down to find “Suggested Addons”.
Select the “Name” of your Add-on.
Click “Submit” to commit your changes.

As opposed to attaching the addon to individual items, Suggested Addons can be attached to Schedule Profiles in Admin>Products>Schedule Profiles. All categories and items with that Schedule Profile will automatically show the attached Suggested Addon.

Once completed, we always recommend navigating to your website to test your changes. Click the “Logo” in the top left side to open your website in a new browser window. This allows you to view and use your website like one of your customers.

Using Multiple Required Addons for Upselling

Here is an example using two Required Add-ons for upselling, rather than a Required Addon followed by a Suggested Addon. In this scenario, we are renting a Cotton Candy Machine that includes one free flavor, and there's a second Required Addon after that that allows the customer to add more flavors for an additional fee. NOTE: keep in mind that after the customer has finished with this process, they'll still see another Suggested Addon! The system always shows the Suggested Addon attached to the last item added to the cart.

For the first Required Addon, notice that there is a “0” in the “Cost” box to indicate that this is a free choice:

For the second Required Addon, the “Cost” box is blank and will use the regular price of the item:

To attach both Required Add-ons to the cotton candy machine:

Navigate to Admin>Products>Items.
Click the “Cotton Candy Machine” to edit it.
Scroll down to find “Required Addons”.
Select the first Required Add-on called “Included Cotton Candy Flavor”.
Type a “1” in the “Qty” box because your customer receives 1 free flavor and must make one choice.
Click “Add More >>” to add another Required Add-on.
Select the second Required Add-on called “Additional Cotton Candy Flavors”.
We cannot type a “1” in the box because this would force the customer to buy another flavor. The “Qty” box accepts a range, such as “0-3”. This allows the customer to select any combination of flavors that equals 0, all the way up to equalling 3.
Click “Submit” to commit your changes.

So this is what the above example would look like on the front end once implemented:

TUTORIAL VIDEOS:

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