Ability to select attributes using `Any...` when adding products to orders manually

[johndcoy]

Summary

Woo mobile app does not support Product Add-ons configuration, making it impossible for merchants to process in-person sales with customizable products. This is a critical business workflow blocker that prevents merchants from using Woo Mobile for POS scenarios.Expected Behavior

When a merchant adds a product with Product Add-ons to an order in the mobile app, they should be able to:

1. Configure add-on options (dropdowns, checkboxes, text fields, etc.) on Woo mobile app
2. Select from available choices (gun models, colors, sizes, etc.)
3. Complete the order with proper add-on data
4. Process payment with full product configuration

Actual Behavior

• No add-on configuration interface appears in the mobile app
• Add-ons are completely ignored when adding products to orders
• Orders are created without add-on data
• Merchants cannot customize products during in-person sales
• Silent failure - no error messages, just missing functionality

Steps to Reproduce

1. Install Woo Mobile app
2. Create a product with Product Add-ons (e.g., dropdown with 50+ options)
3. Open mobile app and create new order
4. Add the product with add-ons to the order
5. Expected: Add-on configuration interface appears
6. Actual: Product is added without any add-on options

Connection to WooCommerce Core Limitations

Root Cause Analysis

This mobile limitation is part of a broader WooCommerce core architectural issue:

1. Variable Product Restriction: WooCommerce core prevents adding variable product parents to admin orders
2. Product Add-ons Workaround: Merchants use Product Add-ons as a workaround for this limitation
3. Mobile Gap: WooCommerce Mobile doesn't support the workaround solution
4. Complete Workflow Breakdown: Merchants are left with no viable mobile solution

Architectural Problem

• WooCommerce Core: "Variable products can't be added to admin orders"
• Product Add-ons: "We'll provide a workaround for this limitation"
• Woo Mobile: "We don't support the workaround"
• Result: No mobile solution exists for merchants with complex product with variations

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Why I’m Writing This

I want to step out of pure technical language for a moment, because this is more than just a missing feature: it’s about real merchants trying to run their businesses.

I came here after working with merchant 10259296. Their products are customizable (gun model, draw hand, kydex print). https://momswhocarry.com/product/kydex-purse-holster/ Not an extreme setup, but still about 50+ variations across three attributes. They sell both online and at in-person events.

Since they mentioned in-person sales, I wanted to recommend WooCommerce POS or the Woo Mobile app.

But the thing is, their pain points is that they cannot select any of the variations: Why? Because of how complex WooCommerce core is. It's what it is.

(As a merchant handling manual order flow, you cannot select variation that is not set as variation on the backend…)

I acknowledged their pain point. I check Woo mobile app still knowing that the same behavior would be seen:

(Only the "Print" option is recognized as selectable variable variation.)

→ How to fix this issue?

I either tell this merchant to create 1500+ variations OR use Product Add-ons.

Why This Matters

I know WooCommerce core has long-standing limitations around variable products in admin orders. Product Add-ons has been the workaround for years. The mobile app currently ignores that workaround, leaving merchants with no viable solution at all for in-person payment space.

I realize not everything can be fixed in WooCommerce core right away. But merchants don’t care about architectural debates: they care about making sales wherever their customers are. Right now, even with workaround of Product Add-ons is not really helpful for merchants who want to process product with customizable elements.

I’d like to record this issue because I believe this is the kind of pain points that are somewhat critical to merchant's businesses yet are often overlooked. (So even if this feature is not possible in Woo mobile anytime soon, I would like this to be here as a recorded case.)

[juliaamosova]

Hi @johndcoy,

Thank you for taking the time to share this idea, we really appreciate your help.

While this is clearly a great improvement/idea we won’t be able to tackle it in the upcoming weeks. We’re going to add it to our backlog where it will be considered for future releases.

[addedlovely]

@juliaamosova Isn't this the same issue as the bug below, even if 'any' is available as option it'll fail the validation. This wasn't how WooCommerce always worked - at the moment you can't add a product to the basket with an attribute set to 'any'?
#28213

[BlackJack7878]

I guess that's bug I'm experiencing right now. I'm trying to add product to cart via add_to_cart(), that product has one of the attributes defined as "any" on backend and as a result I'm see same error as you do. The problem is I don't want to create 800+ variations instead of just 56 I have right now.
It was working fine on 4.0.0 and because of this I'm using an outdated version of woocommerce

[yukikatayama]

Reported in 4454822-zen. This user is also using Subscriptions to create manual variable subscription products where some variations have Any. Due to this, customers cannot checkout.

I think this should be a bug as this can affect business where their business model requires they create manual orders and there may be a 100+ variations that need to be created, which isn't recommended.