Bundles and assembled packs

A bundle is something you pack from finished goods you have already made: a three-bottle gift set, a mixed sampler, a retail multipack. It's the one thing in Crown that isn't produced by a batch, and that's exactly why it needs its own handling. A bundle has no recipe and nothing to cook. It's assembled from lots of your existing products, and it carries its own lot code, expiry, and carton label.

You work with bundles in two places:

• Products → Bundles is where you define a bundle: its name, what goes into one pack, and its lot-code format.
• Batches → Bundles is where you assemble packs, alongside your production batches, and see every pack you have made.

Defining a bundle

A bundle is defined once, then assembled as often as you need. Defining it records what the bundle is made of; it doesn't create any stock.

1. Create the bundle

   On Products, open the Bundles tab and select Add bundle. Crown opens a New bundle page.

2. Name it

   Fill in Bundle name the way you'd list it on an order, such as "Hot Sauce Trio (3 x 150 mL)". Add a Bundle code as an internal identifier if you use one, and set the Status.

3. Add its components

   Under Components, add a row for each SKU that goes into one pack, and how many of it. A four-bottle sampler with one of each variety is four rows of one; a case of twelve of a single bottle is one row of twelve.

4. Set its lot-code format

   Under Lot code, either inherit your company's format or override it for this bundle. A pack needs a code that isn't borrowed from a product, because a bundle doesn't have one.

5. Save

   Select Save. The bundle now exists as a definition, ready to assemble against.

Optionally record a UPC / EAN, a Carton barcode (GTIN-14), and an HS tariff code on the bundle, the same way you would on a product SKU. These print on the pack's carton label and travel with it to a distributor.

Crown QMSThe Bundles tab

Enlarge

Assembling packs

Assembling is the step that creates real stock. It consumes the component lots you choose and produces a lot of the bundle.

1. Start an assembly

   Open Batches from the main menu, select the Bundles tab, then Assemble bundles. From a bundle's own page on Products, View packs takes you straight to that bundle's packs.

2. Choose the bundle and how many packs

   Pick the bundle and enter Packs. Leave Lot code blank to generate one from the bundle's format, or type one in.

3. Check the components

   The Component check compares what each component needs with what you have in date, and flags any shortfall before you start picking lots. Expired stock is shown separately.

4. Check the lots you're packing from

   Under Lots, Crown has already picked each component's soonest-expiring lots that are still in date, splitting across lots when one runs short. Change a line's lot or quantity, remove it with ×, or select + Add lot to draw from another. Each component's total has to match what the pack count needs before Crown will let you assemble. Changing Packs picks the lots again from scratch, so set the pack count first.

5. Assemble

   Crown shows the pack expiry it will inherit: the earliest date among the lots you picked. Select Assemble. The component lots are consumed, and the new pack lot appears on the Bundles tab.

Adding a run to an existing pack lot

If you pack the same bundle again from exactly the same component lots as a pack lot that's still in stock, Crown asks whether to add the new packs to that lot or make a new one. Adding keeps the lot's code and best-before, and the pack's Runs list shows each run with its date, person and pack count.

Crown only asks when every lot matches. If one lot differs, even because an earlier lot has run out, or the bundle's recipe has changed since, the run gets a new lot code, so a lot code always names one set of ingredients.

Printing a carton label

A carton label prints from a pack, not from the bundle definition, so you need to assemble one before you can print its label. On Batches → Bundles, open the pack and select Carton label.

The label uses your company-level carton label settings, the same as any product label. See Setting up carton labels.

Costing a bundle

Crown costs a bundle from what it's packed from. As you add components, it rolls up the cost of each component SKU from that product's own cost data, and adds any packaging cost you record on the bundle itself (the gift box, the insert, the shrink wrap).

That gives you a cost per pack you can price against, without having to maintain a separate figure that drifts every time an ingredient price moves.

Voiding a mis-recorded pack

If you recorded an assembly that never happened, or recorded it twice, void the pack rather than leaving a phantom lot in inventory.

Open the pack on Batches → Bundles, select Void, and give a reason. Its component lots return to stock, the pack leaves inventory, and it stays listed on the Bundles tab as Voided.

How bundles reach your traceability chain

Assembled packs are full participants in trace and recall, in both directions.

Backward, from a pack. Trace a pack's lot code and Crown shows a Packed from card listing every component lot inside it, each linked to the batch that produced it. This is the hop a recall on a pack has to make to reach real production records.

Forward, from a component. Trace a finished-good lot and Crown shows a Packed into card: every pack that lot shipped inside, with how much of it was used and how much of that pack remains. This is what you need when a single ingredient lot goes bad and you have to work out which gift sets it ended up in.

Voided packs are left out of both directions, so a corrected record doesn't pollute a recall.

Bundles also appear elsewhere you'd expect:

• Inventory lists assembled packs alongside batch-produced lots on the Finished Goods tab, marked Assembled in the Batch column. Filter by Type → Bundled goods to see only packs.
• Complaints can name a bundle. The product picker lists bundles with a "(bundle)" suffix, and selecting one loads that bundle's pack lots instead of product lots.
• The Bundles list on Products shows how many components each bundle has, its units per pack, and how many packs are on hand and shippable. It exports that summary to CSV.
• The Bundles tab on Batches lists every pack lot you have assembled, with who assembled it and what it was made from, and exports to CSV.
• Your whole-company data export includes what actually went into each assembled pack, not just what a pack is supposed to contain. That is the record an auditor follows from a recalled component to the packs it shipped inside.

What's next

For the whole picture of how lots connect, see How lot traceability works.