Do's and Don'ts With The Item Generator

The Item Generator is the easiest way to set up Items in BackerKit, and map those items to all the relevant places in your project set up. This article will give examples/best practices for using the Item Generator, as well as give some examples of things not to do. 

For an overview of the Item Generator, see  How do I set up items in BackerKit? To learn more about SKUs see Overview: SKUs

Skip to:

• What's The Name of This Item?
• Does This Item Have Any Options? (Size/Style/Color, etc.)
• Do Backers Receive This As Part of Their Pledge Level
• Can Backers Select This as an Add-On?

What's the name of the item?

This is going to be the main name for the item you are setting up.

Do:

Include the primary name: "Pin", "T-Shirt", or "Crowdfunding: The Game - Special Edition"

Include branding when desired:  "BackerKit Pin" "BackerKit T-Shirt", or "BackerKit Fidget Spinner"

Don't:

Differentiate between Early Bird and Standard rewards, or production timeline:  "Early Bird Crowdfunding: The Game - Special Edition" or "First Wave BackerKit Pin"

Include selections/variants of an item: "Large Yellow T-Shirt" "Blue BackerKit Hat" - this will be added later!

Recreate Pledge Levels as Items: "Bard Pledge Level", "$79 Pledge Level", "Family Pack Pledge Level"

Create SKUs for multiple quantities (Unless the items come packaged together from the manufacturer): "2x Crowdfunding: The Game - Special Edition"  *you will be able to assign additional quantity later. (What would be ok is "4 Pack of Wine Glasses" where the 4 glasses are packaged together at the manufacturer/they can't be bought individually. )

Does this item have any options (size, color, style, etc)?

Here you can enter in the different variations an item may have. Common variants include Color, Size, Style, Material, but could also be specific/unique to the item/project. 

Do:

Include all variants available for an item, with the category of the variant on the left, and the available selections in that category as a unique entry on the right. 

Add a new option for each unique selection that should be made for an item (Size+Color on a t-shirt for example). 

Don't: 

Add available selections into the left hand section (I.E. "Option Name" shouldn't be "Small", or "Yellow")

Include multiple selection categories in the Option Values.

Do backers receive this as part of their pledge level?

Here you can assign the items to pledge levels. Questions will be automatically generated if you included variants in the previous section.

Do:

Include the number for how many units of the item a backer receives/can choose

Don't: 

Include a quantity if the backer can also choose between several different items that will be generated later. 

Example: Choose 1 Sweatshirt or 1 Jacket. In this case, you will need to manually create a question with each of these variants, the item generator will not be able to combine 2 different generated items into a single question.  

Break-out quantity for different priced pledge levels. An early bird pledge level should have the same quantity as a standard priced pledge level. 

Can backers select this as an add-on?

Here you can automatically create an add-on for the item.

Do:

Set a price and description if backers should be able to purchase additional units on top of what they are already receiving with their pledge

Don't:

Sweat the specific price/description. You will be able to update this later!

Think you can create the add-on later. Best to create the add-on right away, deleting it is much easier than recreating it later.