Converting simple products to variable products

For this article, we will use a t-shirt as an example product. The t-shirt comes in 3 sizes, small/medium/large.

We already have 3 products setup on WooCommerce as simple products, one for each size. Before creating a variable product and deleting out the simple products, we recommend these steps:

1. Check our product linker to see if these products are linked
1. If they are linked, then set them to draft status on Woo and then unlink them and click on save
2. Create a top level variable product and save it in draft status
   
1. It is important that it is in draft status otherwise Woo sends out the product update for variations being added even before you have had a chance to add the SKU and other product data to the variation which can lead to duplicate products being created on EposNow.
3. Add the variations
1. Make sure you set the SKU to match the SKU/Barcode of the matching EposNow product so that duplicates are not created. If you have a different matching criteria, that is fine, just make sure the field used for matching is set before the product gets published.
   
2. Set this before saving the variation/product
   
4. Our system will detect that the product already exists on EposNow and will link it together and then update the stock level from EposNow to Woo
5. Delete the old simple products
1. As these are no longer linked, we will take no further action