A gift box is three jars of jam, a squeeze of honey and a bag of granola — items you already sell loose, off the same shelf. So the moment you decide to sell them together as one boxed set, a quiet accounting problem appears: if the jam is in the box and still listed on the shelf, are you now counting it twice?
This is the question that stops most small sellers from offering a gift box or a variety pack at all. They picture a second, parallel inventory they have to keep in sync by hand — and they're right to worry, because a lot of tools make you do exactly that. On TallyTill you don't. A bundle is built from the products you already have, and selling one draws each part off the shelf exactly as if you'd sold it loose. There is no second count.
Here's how it works, why the till shows "can make 12" instead of a stock number, and where a bundle is the wrong tool for the job.
What a bundle actually is
On TallyTill, a bundle is a product — but instead of being a thing on a shelf, it's a list of other products. A gift box, a sampler, a starter kit, a "try everything" crate. You build it once in your Portal catalog by choosing "a bundle of other products" instead of "a single item," then you list what goes inside and how many of each.
That last part matters: each line has a quantity. A box can be two jars of jam, one honey and one bag of granola. The bundle points at your existing catalog entries — it doesn't create copies of them.
Why the till says "can make 12," not "12 in stock"
Open your Stock page and a normal product shows a number — 47 jars of jam. A bundle shows something different: "Can make 12."
That's deliberate, and it's the whole idea. A bundle has no stock of its own to count, because it isn't a thing you put on a shelf and tick down. What it has is a ceiling set by its scarcest ingredient. If a box needs two jars of jam and you have 47 jars, the jam alone allows 23 boxes. But if you only have 12 jars of honey and each box needs one, honey is the limit — so the box reads "can make 12." The number is the answer to a question ("how many of these could I assemble right now?"), so TallyTill puts the answer first.
Sell one gift box and every count behind it moves at once: jam drops by two, honey by one, granola by one — and the "can make" figure recalculates on the spot. You never told the system the box contained honey a second time. You told it once, when you built the box.
One honest edge to know: if nothing inside a bundle is stock-tracked — say you don't count any of the parts — the catalog just labels it "Bundle" and leaves it at that. There's nothing to add up, so it doesn't pretend to. The "can make" number only appears when at least one ingredient is being counted, and it always reflects the tightest one.
The receipt remembers what actually went in
Recipes change. You swap the summer jam for a fall apple butter; you bump the box from one honey to two. That's fine — but it raises a subtle question about the boxes you already sold. If you edit the recipe today, does last month's receipt quietly rewrite itself to show the new contents?
No. When a bundle sells, TallyTill copies the recipe onto that sale. The order line carries its own frozen list of what was inside at the moment of purchase. Change the box next week and only future sales use the new recipe; a customer's old receipt — and your own records of what left the building — still show exactly what went out the door. This is the kind of thing you don't notice until you need it: a return, a tax question, a "what was in the October box?" six months later.
Pricing: the box is worth more than its parts
A bundle carries its own price, set independently of the items inside it. That's what lets you do the one thing a gift box is for: price the set below the sum of the loose items, and still come out ahead.
The reason that works isn't just the discount. Across retail, bundling is one of the most dependable ways to lift the size of an order, because a shopper reaches for one clearly-priced "deal" far more readily than they assemble the same cart item by item — and they tend to feel a bundle is worth more than its parts even when the saving is modest.
For a farm stand or market stall the move is concrete: take a slow item off your hands by pairing it with a fast one. The odd cut of meat nobody reaches for, packed beside the ground beef everyone wants. The single jar that's been sitting since August, built into the "harvest sampler." You set the box price, the parts come off stock on their own, and you've turned dead weight into a reason to spend more. (If you sell those cuts by weight, the same catalog holds both — see selling by weight at a self-serve stand and selling beef shares by hanging weight.)
Building one, start to finish
Bundles are built in the Portal, not on the till — your catalog lives in the cloud and every till pulls from it, so you make the box once and it appears on every device.
- Catalog → add a product. Give the box a name and, if you like, a photo and a category. Themed names sell: "Harvest Sampler," "Breakfast Box," "Beginner's Share."
- Choose "a bundle of other products." The form switches from a single-item's stock fields to a list of what's inside.
- Add each component and its quantity. Pick from the products you already sell. Two of this, one of that.
- Set the box's price. This is the bundle's own price — usually a little under the parts added up.
- Save. On the next sync, the box is on every till. Tap it once to sell it; the shelf takes care of itself.
Because the parts are your real, counted inventory, your low-stock alerts keep working through the bundle. If gift-box season eats into your honey, the honey is what trips the low-stock warning — the box didn't hide the drawdown, it caused it in plain sight. If you're moving your catalog over from another system to get started, you can import it without recounting your shelves.
Where a bundle is the wrong tool
Two honest limits, so you don't reach for a bundle and find it doesn't fit:
- A bundle is a one-time sale of a set, not a subscription. If you want members to pay for a season and receive a box every week, that's a share plan, not a bundle — a different feature built for recurring, per-member boxes with holds, swaps and instalments. If "gift box" in your head means "a standing weekly delivery," start with setting up a CSA instead.
- A bundle isn't a discount code. It's a fixed set at a fixed price. "Any three jars for $20, customer's choice" is a different kind of offer — a bundle is "these three jars for $20."
Get those two straight and the rest is exactly what you'd hope: one tap at the counter, one price, and a stock count that stays honest without you touching it twice.
Start selling boxes this season
If you're eyeing the holidays, a gift box is the highest-leverage thing you can add to a stand before December — one new catalog entry, no new inventory to buy, a bigger average sale.
You can build and sell one on the Stand plan, which is free — $0 per seat, no credit card to start, for as long as you want it. Turn a phone or tablet you already own into the till; scan a barcode, or snap a photo and let AI identify the item. Create your free TallyTill account and have your first gift box on the shelf this week.
Sources for the bundling figures above (general retail estimates, not TallyTill customer data): McKinsey bundling/AOV summary via Workast; ecommerce AOV statistics 2026, Ringly.