Product out of stock

[StevenPer]

We don't use the inventory system provided by able commerce, however, I would still like customers to see stock which is out of stock, but instead of a "buy now" link, have a "out of stock" message. Is this possible? Is there just a setting I can select, or is there something else I need to do?

[sohaib]

It is not clear what you want. You say you are not using AC inventory. Means inventory tracking is disabled?
In that case how do you want the program to know that an item is out of stock so that it hides 'buy now' button and displays out of stock message?
Any reason not using AC inventory?

[nickc]

If your intent is to be able to switch on/off the availability of products - you could do that:

• Stock all available products at a count of 1000 (or some value that would never be exceeded in a single basket)
• Stock all unavailable products at a count of 0
• Under "Configure::Store" check "Enable Inventory" and set "Display Inventory" to "No"
• Under "Configure:: Order Statuses" set all status "Stock" setttings to "None"

-Nick

[StevenPer]

Hi sohaib,

THanks for your message. I don't need the system to automatically know when product is out of stock (I will know - I want to be able to manually change a product's status to "out of stock".

Cheers NickC - I will give that a try.

Does anyone else have any ideas?

[AbleMods]

We don't use the inventory system provided by able commerce, however, I would still like customers to see stock which is out of stock, but instead of a "buy now" link, have a "out of stock" message. Is this possible? Is there just a setting I can select, or is there something else I need to do?

I'm a little confused too. You're using inventory to decide if the buy button is available yet you don't want to use inventory.

Depending on the size of your catalog, it might be easier to just check the "Disable Purchase" checkbox on the product record for each product you want to be unavailable. Then regardless of any AC7 inventory value, the item cannot be purchased.

Otherwise, just turn the inventory on and set the items to 0 quantity with the Checkbox unchecked for "Allow Backorder". That will automatically show the out-of-stock message and prohibit purchase of it.

[StevenPer]

Thanks for everyone trying to help. I dont mean to confuse people. Let me put it this way:

1. I don't want to use ablecommerce's built in inventory tracking as we have stock coming in and out of our warehouse all the time. It would be alot of work to have to update ablecommerce everytime we got some more of a particular product in.

2. occasionally, our suppliers can't supply a particular product for a short period, and our warehouse runs out of it. We want customers to still see that we do normally sell the product, we just happen to be out of it for the time being (if we just turn the product of, we get lots of "you sell small and medium widgets, don't you sell large widgets" questions).

I hope that makes sense.

Steven

[compunerdy]

Turn on the AC7 inventory system. Set it to say out of stock when a item is out of stock. Leave all items as non inventory tracked except the ones you want to list as out of stock and set those to have 0 inventory and tracked.

[AbleMods]

Precisely.