I have run out of many products; while I wait to restock, customers still get to the product pages even though I have 0 inventory, and so the price and "add to cart" button are still there. They try to add one to their cart and get the "inventory is too high' (or whatever it is) warning. It seems I have to manually check the "call for pricing" box to get rid of the add-to-cart buttons. But since my products are hidden there's no easy way to edit them unless I switch back and forth one at a time between Inventory Manager (can't directly edit a product from here) and Product Manager.

I suppose I could un-hide all the out-of-stock products and individually check the 'call for pricing' boxes and add the out-of-stock text, but it seems there should be an easier way. It would be great if when you ran out of stock, it didn't just disappear, but would take out the add-to-cart button. Am i missing something? thanks!

Bama,

I here Ya,

We just set it to not allow people to add "out of stock" items to the cart. So they get the message "please lower your quantity of this item"

I know, its insane, but heh, thats the best version 4 offers right now. Maybe after we get on version 7 we can get with this millennium.

What we do, since we do not allow back orders, is add a graphic to the page that says something like, "this item is not in stock, but is allowed for pre-order(or back order) at this time" and then set set the inventory to an artificial amount so the customer can place a back order or pre-order for the item.

We un check the spot where it says "hide items that are out of stock" so if an item is out of stock, it is still visible on the site, but not available for purchase unless, we specify that it is not available except for pre-order or back order at this time as I stated above.

I had a feeling there was nothing to be done. I want to hide my out of stock items, because I'm constantly changing product, or some are discontinued, etc. Don't want to mess with backorders, just easier to sell what I've got on my site. thanks for the info!

Actually, Bama, I think there is a setting that auto hides out of stock items.

If you go to Settings > > Site Wide Settings >> System Options

about the 7th one down there is "Hide Products If Not In Stock" you set it to yes, and then it will auto hide items that are not in stock. Don't know why I didn't think of it the other day, but it is back in settings section for you to choose.

BamaCat,

To make it easier to find products that are at 0 in stock, why not go to Inventory > Product Manager and change the drop down menu next to the search feature to display < Instock Products and enter 1 in the search box. This will show all products on your site at 0 in stock.

Auto hide only hides the product on your site. If your product page is indexed and a customer clicks that link, it still looks like it's in stock. Go Here this product is hidden and out of stock but looks just like it's in stock. Not sure if it looks different if you use a Layout, maybe my custom html needs a script for this since I use the Product Details Editor?

Acro,
Thanks! I must have flaked on that, i forgot it was an option in the dropdown!

You might be right here. Try adding <%DRAWPRODUCTINVENTORYSTATUS%> to your product layout and see if that makes a difference.

Why not display the stock status on the layout, so that out of stock items say out of stock. When you add the item to the cart with an out of stock item it does come up with the message that you can't add it to the cart.

Bama, I here where you are coming from, and hope you can get closer to what you are looking for, but I do need to tell remind you and I, "Life ain't Perfect . . . and neither is an eccomerce Shopping Cart" I don't care what version or company you use, you just got to do the best you can with it.

I don't want people to know what my stock is. I don't know why actually. Probably because I only have 1-3 of almost everything. Makes me feel small.

I know it's not perfect, it's not that big a deal, I just went through my 0 inventory and checked off the 'call for pricing' boxes, so it wasn't that big a deal now that I know how to edit products from Inventory > Product manager. So it's fine. Would be a nice feature though, that if you don't want to display your inventory, your page will still change the same way if you were.

Bama,

So what you do is not show the inventory level, just show wether it is in stock or not. Look in the settings, it will put a Y or a N.

So, when I go to the product manager and search for hidden products, I have 25 pages of hidden products--about 650 hidden products. These products are all out of stock. I thought by hiding them, they wouldn't be available, but I just learned that's not the case. I don't want to delete them because we may get some of these back in stock. I also can't use the inventory option because the store has a separate inventory system and they don't keep the inventory up to date on the site. So, I guess I'm going to have to go in and do the "call for pricing" and "call message" work around.

• Is the only way to update the Call About Pricing text to go into each individual product page (all 650!) and edit them individually?
• I could try the inventory y/n option, but I guess I have the same question--do I have to edit each product page individually?

I'm afraid of the answer, but I can't believe that there isn't an easy way to mass edit the product pages. I'm certainly learning a lot today...

i know what you mean