🧩 Setting up variant options is a much better job now
The spreadsheet is gone. Options are now simple blocks with values as tags, you work in one language at a time, and the options you create are shared across your whole catalogue so you name each one once.
If you sell anything in more than one size or colour, you've met the Variant options card. It used to be a wide spreadsheet with a column for every language you publish in, and it was laid out backwards: the option's own name lived out in those columns, so scrolling sideways left you looking at rows you could no longer identify. Values were labelled Value label 1 and Value label 2, with the actual words in a separate column.
The card's job is deciding what varies. It now looks like that job.
One block per option
Each option is its own block: the name, its values, and a box to add more.
Values are tags. Type one and press Enter or a comma to add it. Backspace on an empty box removes the last one. And if you already have the list somewhere else, paste it straight in - S, M, L, XL, XXL becomes five values in one go, split on commas, semicolons, tabs or line breaks.
To fix a value's wording, click the tag and type. To remove it, click its ×.
Up to four options per product, which gives you every combination of them.
Work in one language, not all of them
Every block has a language button showing which language you're reading, and how far along the translations are: EN | 2/7 languages.
Click it and you get a row of your product languages, each with a dot showing whether that language is finished for this option. Pick one and the whole block switches: the name, the tags, and the fields for translating them. One language at a time, properly, instead of eight columns fighting for width.
Two smaller things that used to catch people out:
- The card reads in your language. Browsing in English shows the English names. If a label hasn't been translated yet, you get the nearest one that exists, rather than a blank or a piece of code.
- Your default product language is a language like any other. It used to be the one field you couldn't reach from the translations panel, which made it look uneditable.
Options are shared, so you only name them once
This is the part worth knowing. An option like Colour belongs to your company, not to one product. Every product that uses it points at the same one.
That means renaming it once renames it everywhere. Change "Colour" to "Shade" and all 200 t-shirts follow, immediately. No hunting through products.
It also means Erpilo tries hard to keep you on the existing one:
- As you type a name, matching options are suggested, each showing its code and a preview of its values. Pick one and its values come with it.
- Options already on the product appear greyed out and can't be picked twice.
- Even if you ignore the suggestions and just type "Colour", you get the existing Colour. No accidental second copy.
Because an edit reaches every product, the card tells you so, and asks you to confirm before an actual rename. Filling in a missing translation doesn't ask - that's not a rename, and being asked every time would train you to click through it.
Every option has a permanent code
Under each name you'll now see something like Code: colour.
That's the option's real identity. It's used in your variant SKUs and in CSV exports, which is why it never changes once created - if it did, every variant you already have would stop matching. You'll see it forming as you type the first name, then it's fixed.
The name and the code can drift apart, and that's fine. Rename the option to "Shade" and the code stays colour; your SKUs and your exports keep working exactly as before.
New: Settings â–¸ Option catalog
Admins now have a page listing every option in the company: its name, its code, how many products use it, and how complete its translations are.
From there you can:
- Rename an option or any of its values, in any language, in one place.
- Archive one you've stopped using. It disappears from the suggestions when defining variants, and every product already using it carries on untouched.
- Delete one nothing uses at all. If something does use it, Erpilo tells you how many products and offers archiving instead.
Options are still born on a product, in the Variant options card. This page is for looking after them afterwards.
One thing worth remembering: archiving hides an option but doesn't release its code. A new option with the same name gets a numbered one.
Once your variants exist, the editor gets out of the way
The moment a product has variants, the options collapse to a single line of context - Colour: Yellow, Red · Size: S, M, L - with an Edit options button. The variants table moves up to where you actually work, and now has a heading telling you what it's for: the SKU, price, cost, barcode and weight of each variant, saved as soon as you leave a field.
Regenerating tells you what it will destroy
Change your options after variants exist and some of those variants no longer fit. They used to disappear without a word.
Now you get a confirmation naming exactly what's about to go - how many variants, which SKUs, and how much stock they're holding - before anything happens. Cancel and nothing changes.
Options that don't create variants
You may have an older option marked Multi-select or Text, greyed out with "does not create variants".
Only single-choice options can produce variants, because a variant needs exactly one value from each option. A multi-select option holds several values at once, so there's nothing to split into separate products. These used to be offered as if they worked, and quietly produced nothing.
They're left exactly as they are rather than converted, since other products may be using them. You can detach one from a product at any time with its bin icon.