How to run bundles in 2026

Say goodbye to Phantom SKUs

Shopify finally made bundles boring, in the best way.

For years, doing kits and bundles properly meant hacks, phantom SKUs, inventory syncs, and someone in ops quietly hating everyone. Now it’s Shopify’s problem. To the customer, it’s a tidy bundle, and your warehouse and ERP still deal in normal SKUs.

That last bit is the whole point. Bundling isn’t a merchandising trick, it’s an ops decision. Here’s what your back-office teams like merch, finance & ops, and leadership need to prepare for your business to nail bundles.

Start by deciding what kind of bundle you’re actually selling

Most teams talk about bundles like it’s one thing. It isn’t, and the wrong choice shows up later as stock errors, messy reporting, and returns chaos.

It’s always the same three patterns.

1 - Promo bundles. No bundle product, no new SKU, just existing products with an automatic discount like 3 for 2. It’s easiest on ops, but it’s also the least curated experience.

2 - Virtual bundles. The customer browses and buys a set, but the order is exploded into the component SKUs for checkout and fulfilment. This is what Shopify Bundles does, and most bundle apps do the same cart swap.

3 - Physical kits. You pre-pack and stock a kit SKU, often because it’s gift wrapped, it’s sold wholesale too, or you need pick speed. This is a real manufacturing and inventory problem, not a website problem.

Here’s the awkward bit. You can run a lot of virtual bundles with very few operational headaches.

You can run physical kits too, but only if your back office can do kitting, assembly, and clean stock movements.

What changed on Shopify and why it’s different now

Shopify’s own Bundles app has been around for a while, but the bigger win is Shopify getting out of its own way. The variant limit bump means you can build proper choices without hitting a wall on day one.

In the cart, Shopify can swap the bundle for the components. That means inventory gets checked and comes off the component SKUs, not on some made-up kit item you have to babysit.

So your warehouse doesn’t need to learn what a bundle is. It just sees pickable SKUs like normal.

Keep the truth at component level in your core systems

Here’s where brands still mess it up. They get excited, they create bundle items in the ERP, and now they’ve invented a parallel product universe.

So start there. Shopify can own the bundle definition and the customer experience. Your ERP and planning tools should just see the component SKUs, and you tag the lines so you can tell they came from a bundle. That usually means tagging it, not creating new stock items.

If you want bundle-level reporting, push a bundle ID into line item properties, or whatever field your connector gives you. Then pull the exploded lines back together in reporting. Track it, but don’t stock it.

This is where forecasting turns into chaos. If your plan only watches top-line bundle sales, you’ll miss the real story, which is which component SKU is getting pulled forward and which one is quietly becoming the constraint.

Warehouse and your 3PL are where bundles either sing or fall over

Virtual bundles are simple only if pick and pack is dead clear.

If your bundle needs special packaging, don’t rely on someone reading order notes. Add the packaging as its own component line, like Gift Box, so it appears on pick lists and packing slips. If the bundle must ship together, check your OMS rules and your 3PL SOPs. They need to match that.

Keep an eye on multi-location stock. Shopify bundles don’t always track bundle stock per location cleanly. You can end up with bundles that look available because total stock exists, but the components are split across sites.

Either restrict bundles to items in the same warehouse, or accept that you’ll be splitting shipments and paying for it.

Finance needs a heads up because the numbers will look weird at first

Shopify typically spreads the bundle discount across the components based on their price. Good. It keeps tax and refunds consistent, and it means you can still see net sales at SKU level.

It’s also the bit that spooks finance if you don’t warn them. Your core SKUs will suddenly show a lower net ASP because they’re being sold inside a set, and it can look like margin is collapsing when it’s actually just mix.

Decide how you’ll report it before you launch. Do you want to report bundles as their own products, or are bundles just a way of selling and you only care about component sell-through and margin. Either works. Pick one and build your reporting that way.

Also, do the boring maintenance. Shopify bundle pricing doesn’t always update when component prices change, so someone has to own regular bundle price checks or you’ll wake up with accidental discounts.

Returns is the bit no one thinks about until it’s on fire

Bundle returns are where it gets messy. Customers will return one item out of a discounted set, and if you leave it alone they effectively keep some discount on the item they kept.

You’ve got options:

• Keep it simple. Refund each item at its net paid price and move on.

• State clearly that bundle pricing applies only if you keep the full set, and refunds will be adjusted if you break it.

• For the small minority of bundles where it’s justified, require the full set back for a full refund.

Don’t over-engineer for the odd chancer. If your bundle savings are modest, and paid returns are increasingly normal, the incentive for customers to run clever schemes is usually lower than the effort it takes to police it.

The real operational work is making sure your returns portal and CS team can spot when an item was bought as part of a bundle, and follow whatever policy you picked without someone living in a spreadsheet.

Don’t get cute with bundle complexity unless you’re ready to pay for it

Shopify’s native tooling is good for fixed sets, multipacks, and choose-one-from-each style bundles. It’s still not magic for pick-any-X-of-Y bundle builders, and it’s not a clean answer for subscription bundles.

If marketing is pushing a build-your-own bundle builder, treat it like a proper product build. Budget for build, testing, and ongoing maintenance.

Either buy a specialist bundle app or build it.

Or simplify the offer so it fits what Shopify can do reliably.

How to run bundles like an operator

Go look at your own bundle launch checklist. If it’s just merchandising and site changes, you’re already in trouble.

Make it clear who owns Shopify.

Merch decides the offer. Ops checks pick and pack. Finance signs off how revenue and discounting will land. Whoever owns the integrations makes sure the data stays clean all the way through.

Bundles should feel like a win, not a new category of firefighting. Make the customer experience slick on Shopify. Keep core systems grounded in the component SKUs.

Do the unsexy process work on inventory, fulfilment, reporting, and returns. That’s how you get the upside without the chaos.