OpenCart development (module?) work required

Please quote for the following OpenCart development brief to be done (OC Version 2.0):

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‘Phantom Product’ system

This is NOT a product in it’s own right but must display and act like a product in the shop.

A ‘Phantom Product’ will be made from one or more other products in the product database, where they act as components of the Phantom Product, using their SKUs to accurately manage stock levels of those component products and also the availability of the Phantom Product. This may be a single product that is sold in set quantities or a combination of products.

Example of the problem:

We buy marker pens in cases of 48.

We want to sell them as:
‘Pack of 5’ = $5
‘Case of 48’ = $40

As you can see the Case quantity is indivisible by the Pack quantity. So it cannot be a discount based on a ‘multiple’ of the Pack quantity and therefore the Pack cannot be the ‘product’ on which any discount is based. It would only work accurately where SINGLE marker pens are the unit (SKU) on which calculations are based.

Using ‘Options’ is not an appropriate solution, as the Pack and Case are visually very different (as well as weight and packing issues). At the product category levels ‘Options’ cannot be displayed clearly. Such discounts often benefit from being displayed as separate products in the category level rather than ‘options’ which can only be selected when a customer clicks through to the full product page (the best these Options can offer on category level is ‘From $X’ using the lowest value option - useless if a customer wants to print off a current price list or get an overview of all products)

Equally we cannot allow customers to buy 49 pens, as this creates problems. The discount is offered because no time is spent counting or packing pens and the Case can be shipped without any other packaging required… allowing a purchase of 49, 50 or 51 pens at the same price per pen as 48 creates additional costs that undermine that basis of the discount!
So, for that reason we CANNOT have a simple quantity based discount
i.e. 1-10 = $X, 11-20 = $X.

We only want to display Packs of 5 and Cases of 48. The consumer should never see a single marker pen as a product (it will remain invisible to anyone, including Google etc, except via the Admin interface).

The solution we are seeking:
We want to create ‘Phantom Products’. This concept is a product which does not really exist but is just a means of presenting information about other ‘real’ products in OpenCart. (It is like an ‘apparition’!)

We can describe the products that are referred to by Phantom Products as Source Products.

Ideally a Phantom Product would be created like a normal product in OpenCart, it could have all the same information (description, price, tax settings, images, etc), and would display like a product appearing in categories, with full product page with its own URL, etc.

BUT - it is not generated FROM a product in OpenCart… it is independent of the product data. Yet can be made subject to that data.

Within a Phantom Product you will not have a ‘stock quantity’ option - it is NOT stocked.

Instead you can enter what SKU of the Source Product is consumed and in what quantity the Phantom Product consumes it. ‘Availability’ then can be based on the number of Source Products available divided by the multiple in which it is consumed.

Admin features:
Phantom Products need to appear in the product lists in the same way as normal products currently do.

Quantity available:
The display of ‘quantity available’ on a Phantom Product will need to be based on on a division of the Source Product SKU.

E.g. 95 marker pens in stock will show:
Case 48 = 1 available (a second case cannot be made from the remaining stock of 47)
Pack of 5 = 19 available

When a Source Product becomes out of stock, the Phantom Product will also display as ‘out of stock’.

E.g. 40 marker pens in stock will show:
Case 48 = Out of stock
Pack of 5 = 8 available

There are further details that cannot be listed here due to text limits - only a few small details but explanations are too long! contact us to get the full brief