Configurator Balance Calculation: Surcharges, Not Full Prices

About the Extension

Add-on plugin – requires the Product Configurator (SwpProductOptionsSix). This plugin works exclusively as an extension of the base plugin Product Configurator (SwpProductOptionsSix). Without the installed, active, and separately purchased base plugin, this plugin has no function.

A customer is putting together a desk in your shop. The standard tabletop is already covered by the product price, yet the oak tabletop in the configurator carries a £101.50 label. He reads that as an extra charge on top, skips the maths and leaves. Switching would have cost him £12.50.

The problem

The product configurator prints every option with its own price. As long as all options in a group cost the same, nobody notices. Give that group a preselected default and the product page starts telling a different story than the basket. The customer sees a full option price but only pays the difference against the preselection. You know the rest: messages titled "wrong price" about a price that was never wrong.

The solution

The plugin hooks into the price calculation of the configurator and offsets every option against the preselection of its group. £101.50 becomes +£12.50. £86.00 becomes -£3.00. Thepreselection itself sits at +£0.00. The basket total does not move by a penny. The only thing that changes is the number the customer looks at, and that one he now reads without a calculator.

What's in it for you

The price explains itself at a glance. A small plus in front of a small number needs no explanation. A full option price next to a full product price does, and nobody in a shop reads that explanation.

Fewer questions between product page and basket. A price that feels wrong is the most common complaint about configurators. Once the product page and the basket tell the same story, that type of message disappears from your inbox.

Your price maintenance stays as it is. The plugin calculates for the display only. Your options keep exactly the values you maintain today. Nothing to duplicate, no price list to rebuild.

The difference stays correct under OSS. If you sell into several EU countries, different tax rates would distort the difference. The plugin rebuilds the gross price of each option from net and the destination tax rate first, and subtracts only after that.

Every sales channel gets its own view. Surcharges in the B2C channel, full option prices in the B2B channel, nothing at all in a staging channel. One switch per channel, no second installation.

Two settings and it stands. Install, activate, pick the display mode. No migration, no template surgery, no data import.

How the plugin works

For every option group the plugin looks up the option marked as the preselection. Its price becomes the baseline. Every other option in the group is offset against it, including the option operator, so discount options carrying a minus keep working. Percentage option prices and bundle options with assigned products are calculated too instead of being skipped.

Only groups set to the calculation type "Difference calculation (multi)" inside the configurator are affected. Everything else passes through untouched, including every group you already calculate a different way.

The plugin carries the original option price along on the price object. For option groups of the product group type, your shop uses it to recalculate right in the browser as soon as the customer switches the preselection. Amounts appear in the currency and language of the respective sales channel.

Typical use cases

Made-to-measure furniture. Tabletop, frame, edge profile: the base price covers the standard build, the alternatives only show what they add on top.

Hardware with upgrade tiers. More storage, a longer warranty, a stronger power supply. Customers compare surcharges against each other instead of end prices against a base price.

One shop, two audiences. Buyers in a B2B channel often want the full line price for their own costing, while consumers in a B2C channel want the surcharge. You set both separately without installing the plugin twice.

Technical facts for your IT team

Shopware 6.7, PHP 8.2 or newer.

Add-on plugin – requires the product configurator (swp/productoptions-six) from version 6.7.12. Without it the plugin does nothing.

Technically it is a service decorator on the price calculation of the base plugin. It creates no tables of its own, ships no migration and changes no Shopware standard table. The only data stored are its two own values in the system configuration.

The plugin sends no data to external servers. It processes no personal data, sets no cookies and writes nothing to log files that could be traced back to a customer.

On performance: the calculation runs inside the existing price request, without an extra call per option. The options of a group are loaded in a single query. The configuration is read per sales channel, so the cache of one channel never serves the values of another.

On uninstall the plugin removes its own configuration entries, unless you tick the option to keep user data. Products and options stay untouched in every case, because the plugin never wrote to them.

To be honest

Without SwpProductOptionsSix this plugin does nothing at all. It extends the configurator, it is not one, and it neither creates options nor models dependencies between them. Recalculation directly in the browser applies only to option groups of the product group type, because that is the only place where the base plugin supplies the original price. With radio buttons, dropdowns and checkboxes the surcharge stays tied to the server side preselection. And if all your options cost the same anyway, you do not need this plugin. Switch it on in one channel first and see how your configurator reads there.

Legal notice

We accept no liability for legal requirements. Please check the use of this plugin with a qualified legal advisor.