Magento 2: How do I track configurable product inventory with intangible attributes?

Question

I'm on Magento 2.2.3, and created some configurable product with multiple attributes and I would like to track my inventory.

Magento treats each variation as a simple product with it's own inventory, but I would like to track only the configurable parent product quantity itself since the attributes are either intangible or unlimited(such as added labor cost).

I've searched everywhere without success and I'm new to Magento. It's hard to imagine this is not possible to configure, I must've missed something.

Answer 1

Where are you trying to track this inventory?

If you're trying to track it for frontend display then have a look at this post

If you're trying to display it in the admin, then your best route would be to create an attribute config_qty and update that attribute value with the sum of the children in stock.

You can do that with an observer that catches a stock decrease on the child product or you can setup a cron to loop through the config items and update that attribute.

Answer 2

I should've used bundle product instead configurable product. This way I could set the bundle product to track inventory and linked product to not track.