About variation attributes

Can I create variation attributes on the edit product page?

No. For variable products you should not use “custom product attributes” (attributes that are created on the product level). You should use “global attributes” instead which are created at Products -> Attributes - and their type should be select. 

This is not only recommended for WP-Lister but required for some advanced WooCommerce features like Layered Navigation as well – and it will greatly reduce your long term maintenance effort as all attributes and values are managed in a single place.

Why doesn’t WP-Lister seem to see the variations of my variable product?

If you prepare a variable product and WP-Lister can’t find any variations for this product, please check if you have selected a value for each variation attribute. You can’t list variations where “Any <value>…” is selected. For example, if your attribute is “Color” then you need to create a variation with quantity and SKU for each color, you can   not set it to “Any Color…”.

Why exactly can’t I use variations with “Any Color…” selected?

This is a limitation of Amazon (and eBay as well), who require each variation to have a stock level value (quantity) – and an SKU in order to sync the inventory properly.

Let’s say you have a T-Shirt which comes in L and XL as well as red, green and blue. The L size costs 12.95 but the XL size costs 14.95. So you create a variable product in WooCommerce with just two variations – one for L and one for XL – but leave the color to “Any Color…” because the color doesn’t influence your price.   Don’t do this - this is just an example!

Amazon needs to know exactly, how many units of each variation are available. If you do it like this and give each variation (L and XL) a quantity of 10, then how should Amazon know how many red XL you have, how many green XL, how many blue XL, etc. WP-Lister can’t know and so can’t Amazon. That’s why you should always use the “Link all variations” feature in WooCommerce which automatically creates all required variations for the attributes you selected.