It’s a question we are often asked:

How did someone buy my product when it’s out of stock?

It’s easy to miss a setting when configuring inventory levels for a product, so in this post we’re going to highlight where the values are and what to check when a product sells when you don’t expect it to.

Enabling Inventory Tracking

If your inventory tracking works for some products then this will already be enabled, but if it’s not working for any of them check here first:

Preferences > Inventory Tracking

Check that “ShopSite Inventory Tracking” is enabled to use ShopSite’s built-in feature.  The “Custom Inventory Tracking Add-on” option would only be used if you are using a module from a 3rd party to track your inventory.

The “Out of Stock Limit” Field

This value is what is missed most often.  If you leave it blank then inventory will be tracked but ShopSite will *NOT* stop an order from being placed as it doesn’t know if the product is out of stock or not.  Be sure to set this to zero or to a higher number if you want to stop orders early and still have a couple left on hand.

With an “Out of Stock Limit” of 0, this product will not be able to be ordered when the “Quantity On Hand” reaches 0.

From The Docs:  “Use this field to tell ShopSite when to stop allowing customers to order this product. You will get an E-mail notification when your Quantity on Hand changes to match this value. In addition, if a customer tries to place an order that would cause your Quantity on Hand to go below this value, you will receive an E-mail notification and the customer will not be allowed to complete the order.“

Advanced Options

If you’re using Advanced Options then the inventory is tracked at the option level so the fields above are not used.  Be sure you set the inventory levels in the “Ordering Options” section of your Edit Product Info screen for your products.  Here is a sample where we have 3 advanced options and the first one has its values entered:

Inventory Tracking with Advanced Options

Inventory values for the “Red” option will be tracked and it won’t be able to be sold after the Qty on Hand reaches 0.  Since the inventory values for the Blue and Green options are blank, inventory will not be tracked and sales will never be stopped.

…

If a product was sold and it shouldn’t have it’s usually going to be the Out of Stock limit field which is the culprit.  If you’re a LexiConn client and you don’t see a reason for why the out of stock product was still purchased don’t hesitate to contact us and we’ll take a look for you.