Group Products, Families & Containers

Group products, product families and containers are three structural ideas that live on a product record in Helm WMS, and they are routinely mistaken for each other. This article separates the three, explains how a group product's components behave for stock, picking and paperwork, and shows how each one is set up and imported.

Which Is Which

All three sit on the same product page and all three sound like grouping. Only one of them changes anything in the warehouse.

Concept	What it is	Where you set it	What it affects
Group product (kit)	A sellable item made up of other products. It holds no stock of its own.	Its own product record, created with an Inventory type of Group	Stock, orders, allocation, picking, documents, channel stock
Product family	A label tying related products together, such as a colour range.	The Family field on a product's Product Information	Filtering and reporting only. Nothing operational.
Container	A packing unit for one product: how many units it holds, plus its weight and size.	The Dimensions section on any product	Barcode types, supplier order multiples, replenishment multiples

So a group product changes what your team picks and ships; a family changes only what you can filter and report on; a container describes how one product is packed. Packaging items and free gifts are a separate idea again, covered in Packaging Items & Free Gifts.

Before You Start

All three live on the product record. Go to Inventory and open a product: the sections are all on that one page. There is no Settings screen for any of them.
A component has to be a product. Only a record whose type is Product can go into a group. You cannot nest a group inside a group, and a service item cannot be a component or hold containers.
You need access to Inventory. If you cannot open products under Inventory, ask whoever administers Helm to check your permission group.

Group Products & How Components Behave

A group product is a kit: one thing your customer buys, made of several things your warehouse holds. The group is what gets sold and priced; the components are what get counted, allocated, picked and listed on paperwork.

Example scenario: you sell a starter set of a mug, a bottle and a tin. You hold and count those three products; you list and price the set. Helm works out how many complete sets you can sell from the three component figures, and when a set is ordered the picker sees the mug, the bottle and the tin, not the set.

Creating a Group & Adding Its Components

Go to Inventory and choose Create Inventory.
Set the Inventory type to Group, add a Name and an Item code, then choose Create Inventory. On the new record those fields read Group Code and Group Price.
Open the Group Products section and use its plus button to open Add Product. Search by product name and add each component.
Set Qty in Group on each row: how many units of that product one unit of the group consumes.
Save the section. Delete from group on a row's actions menu removes a component; Go to product opens it.

How Stock Is Worked Out

A group has no stock of its own and no stock locations, which is why its record has no stock fields you can type into. For each component Helm divides that component's stock by its Qty in Group, rounds down, and takes the lowest answer. That is how many complete groups you have, so one short component caps the group however much of everything else is on the shelf.

Column in Group Products	What it shows
Product Name	The component, with its code. Click through to open it.
Price	The component's own price.
Physical Stock	The component's physical stock. Full stock control only.
Available for Sale	The component's available stock. Turns red with a Notice tooltip when below its Qty in Group. Full stock control only.
Qty in Group	Units of that component consumed by one group. Editable.
Totals	The bottom row: a combined component value for one group, and complete-group stock figures rather than a sum of the rows.

The Totals row is the group's real stock position, and it is a minimum rather than a total. If four components have plenty and the fifth has none, the group reads zero. That is correct, not a fault.

Where a component's available stock is below its Qty in Group, the section warns you: a shortfall to replenish, not an error to dismiss. A Group Price that differs from the components' combined value is allowed, and the record reports the variance so a bundle discount is deliberate.

What Happens When a Group Is Ordered

Helm adds the components to the order too. The order gets the group line plus one line per component, each holding the group quantity multiplied by its Qty in Group. Change the group line's quantity and every component line is recalculated.
Allocation and picking work on the components. The group line is never allocated because it has no stock, so Pick Info sits against the component lines and is empty on the group line.
Documents print the components, not the group. On picking lists, despatch notes and invoices a group row is replaced by its component rows, and the group's value is spread across them. A group with no components yet prints as itself.
Component lines are edited through the group. Use Edit Group for the kit and Edit Group Item for a component; neither can be edited or deleted on its own. Removing a component asks for a Group Price Reduction so the order total stays right.
Group products cannot be purchased. Purchase orders accept products only, so reorder the components. The group's reorder figure is derived from them, as its stock is.

On a component product, the Associated Groups card lists every group it belongs to with the Group Code and the Qty that group takes. Check it before changing or archiving a product. The same information is available as an Associated Groups column on the Inventory list.

One setting worth knowing about: Split group items on export, under Settings > Despatch Settings > International Shipping, decides whether a courier payload should itemise the components or carry the group as one line.

Product Families

A family is a name you attach to related products so you can find and report on them together: one shirt in four colours, one bracket in three lengths. It is purely descriptive, and attaching a product to a family changes no stock, allocation, picking or pricing behaviour. A product belongs to at most one family.

Go to Inventory and open the product.
On Product Information, use the edit button beside Family to open Families.
Pick an existing family, or use Create Family and give it a Family name and a Description.
Choose Assign Family, then save. Unassign Family removes it again, and Edit Families renames or tidies the list itself.

Once products carry families you can add Product Family as a column on the Inventory list, filter on it, and use the family code as a report field. That is the whole of what a family does, and it is why they are worth setting up early: they cost nothing operationally and make a large catalogue navigable.

Renaming a family renames it everywhere it is assigned, and the dialog warns you how many products are affected. Deleting one removes it from every product it was attached to and cannot be undone. The products themselves are untouched either way.

Containers & Container Types

A container answers one question about a product: when it is not handled as single units, what is it handled in and how many does that hold? It records the quantity it contains plus its own Weight, Length, Width and Height, so an outer of 24 carries the weight and size of the full outer, not of one unit.

Containers sit in the Dimensions section of any product, under Container Dimensions. The row above them, Product Dimensions, is the single unit and is fixed at a Type of Piece with a Qty of one.

Go to Inventory, open the product, and open Dimensions.
Use the plus button on that section, Add Containers, and tick the types you use. One row is added per type.
Fill in the Qty each container holds, then its Weight, Length, Width and Height, and save. The Actions column removes a container again.

Nine types are available and a product can hold one row of each:

Type	Typical use
Pack	A retail multipack.
Box	A shelf or shipping box.
Carton	A supplier carton.
Inner	The inner case within an outer.
Outer	The outer case, usually the purchasing unit.
Pallet	A full pallet.
Tote	A reusable tote or tray.
Container	A full shipping container.
Cage	A roll cage or stillage.

Every product also carries a single-unit container of type PCS, created with the product. You never edit it, and it is why Piece is always offered as a barcode type.

What Containers Unlock

Barcode types. The Type list in Add Barcode on a product's Barcodes section offers only the container types that product already has, plus Piece. To scan an outer, add the Outer container first.
Supplier order multiples. On a product's suppliers, Order Multiple is chosen from that product's containers, so replenishment purchase orders are raised in whole cases rather than odd unit counts.
Replenishment multiples. On a stock location, Edit Replenish Level offers Replenish Multiple from the same list. Once set, a replenishment movement to that location must be in whole multiples of that container.

A container in use cannot be deleted. Helm reports Cannot delete container and tells you how many suppliers, or how many locations using it as a replenish multiple, point at it. Clear those first.

Importing Groups & Containers

Imports are uploaded from Settings > Company Settings > Import. Choose the Import type, upload your file, then map your column headings to Helm's fields.

What you are importing	Import type	Columns that matter
A group product itself	Inventory	Inventory Code, Name, and a Type of Group
Components into a group	Inventory	The component's Inventory Code, a Type of Product, the group's code in Parent Inventory Code, and Group Item Quantity
Containers	Container	Inventory Code, Container Type, Quantity, and optionally Weight, Height, Width and Length

A few rules the importers enforce:

Create the group before importing its components. A component row is rejected if the code in Parent Inventory Code does not exist, or is not a group. Large files are processed in parallel batches, so do not rely on the group's own row sitting higher up the same file.
Group Item Quantity is required on any row naming a parent, and that row's Type must be Product. A row putting a group inside a group is rejected.
Container Type must be one of PACK, BOX, CARTON, INNER, OUTER, PALLET, TOTE, CONTAINER, CAGE or PCS, and Quantity is required. Importing a type the product already has updates that container rather than adding a second.
Import containers before anything referencing them. A purchase order controls file that sets an order multiple fails on a container that is not there yet.
Families cannot be imported. There is no family import type and no family column on the inventory import, so families are assigned on the product record or through the API.

Troubleshooting

The Group Shows No Stock, But Its Components Do

Look in Group Products for a component whose Available for Sale is below its Qty in Group: the group is capped by its weakest component. Check that every component has a Qty in Group above zero.

The Group Products Section Is Not There

The record is not a group. That section is drawn only where the type is Group, and a type cannot be changed after creation. Create a group record and add this product to it as a component.

Picking Lists Show Components, Not the Kit

That is by design: documents describe what physically ships, and only the components are in the box. The kit's Name still appears on the order itself.

A Barcode Type Is Missing From the List

The product has no container of that type. Add it under Dimensions, save, then reopen Add Barcode.

Assigning a Family Changed Nothing

It is not meant to. A family only feeds the Product Family column, its filter and reporting. If you expected shared stock, price or picking behaviour, you want a group product.

FAQ

Can a Group Product Contain Another Group?

No. Components must be products, so add the inner kit's components directly to the outer kit.

Does Building a Kit Move Any Stock?

No. A group is a virtual aggregation, so nothing is consumed until the components are picked for a real order. There is no build step to run.

Why Doesn't My Group's Price Match Its Components?

Because Group Price is set independently, which is how a bundle discount works. The record reports the variance against the components' combined value so you can see whether it was intended.

Do Containers Change My Available Stock?

No. Stock is always counted in single units. A container only describes how those units are packed.

If a group's figures still look wrong, compare each component's Available for Sale against its Qty in Group in the Group Products section. If that checks out, contact support with the Group Code and the component codes to hand.

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