Why does my product stock continue to sell when out of stock?

[therisemtb]

Hi,

Some of my products continue selling when out of stock while the "Continue selling when out of stock" box is not checked. I am tracking the inventory, once it reaches zero, someone can still place an order and the stock level will go to -1. I am fulfilling orders from 2 warehouses if that's relevant to my issue. How can I solve this? I am pretty sure all the settings are set properly and this is a shopify issue somehow. Any ideas

Thanks a lot for your help.

[Moira]

Hey @therisemtb

That's strange for sure! It's definitely hard to say what might be happening here, however, we can help get to the bottom of things.

If your product settings were not set to allow overselling, and these orders came through anyway, it might be possible that you have an app that is controlling your inventory. Do you happen to know if you manage inventory via any apps? You can check this by heading to your Settings > Locations then scroll down to the App Locations section. In the example below we can see that my store has 2 dropshipping apps that dictate inventory:

Also, have you made sure to checkmark the Track Quantity box on all products/variants?

A quick way to enable this is through the Bulk Editor function. You can bulk edit products from the Products page in your Shopify admin:

• Bulk Editing Products & Variants · Shopify Help Center - you can also use the bulk editor to edit collections, customers, inventory, and online store blog posts and pages.

TIP: If you need to receive direct notifications of low stock levels, then install an inventory alert app from the Shopify App Store.

I do hope this helps!

[MiPnamic]

I have the same issue, even with no app installed on a development store, the problem can be reproduced as following:

- create a new product with stock size 2

- with one user, add both items to your cart
- with another browser, add both items to your cart
- start the payment process on the first browser
- start the payment process on the other browser

the problem seems that the available quantity is not "double-checked" and when you get back from the payment gateway page, you paid for a product that is no more available.

With auto-fulfilment, this creates a lot of issues.

There are some suggestions on your side?

[Moira]

Hey @MiPnamic!

Are you using multiple locations to stock products?

The stock is deducted from inventory once the payment has been fully captured and processed. Did you complete 2 orders at the same time and the issue still occured?

[MiPnamic]

Hi @Moira,

No, we are not using multiple locations to stock products.

It actually happened more than a couple of times, high-traffic on the store can lead to this result when people want to buy the same product in "quantity" like 5x, or 10x.

We have a limited stock in-house and it takes us "days" to re-stock, so that is kind of an issue.

We actually "patched" understocking the most-requested items but it lead to "false analysis" on our side.

[baronmunchowsen]

Hi - did you ever solve this issue. I have the same problem:

2 locations

1 product - with each location having 1 available

Place an order for 2x product

Expected behaviour would be that both locations go down to 0 available

What actually happens is that the first location has -1 availability, while the 2nd store still shows 2 available.

Here's what it looks like after an order for 2 products is placed: