When we received email/phone orders - we create a new order via the backend of Shopify (as opposed to the front end website). The “Continue Selling when out of Stock” is unchecked on all products. Despite this, we have found that when creating a new order (via Shopify backend), we can still scan and purchase out of stock items. The inventory in turn changes to -1. We would like to prevent out of stock items being purchased at all and would appreciate any advice on how to rectify this. Thank you in advance.
Topic summary
Manual orders in the Shopify admin can still be created and paid for with products at 0 inventory, even when “Continue selling when out of stock” is unchecked.
- Reproduction: Staff creates a new order in the backend, scans/selects a product with 0 stock, and completes payment. Inventory is decremented to -1.
- Frontend vs backend: On the storefront the item displays “Sold out,” but the admin still allows the sale. This suggests the setting may only block storefront purchases, not manual/admin orders.
- Expected behavior: The requester wants an alert or hard stop preventing any sale of out‑of‑stock items via the admin.
- Key question: Does unchecking “Continue selling when out of stock” apply only to the storefront, or should it also enforce stock checks in manual orders?
- Additional report: Another participant confirms experiencing the same issue.
Status: No solution or official clarification provided in the thread; issue remains open and unresolved.
Hi there,
The process is below when receiving an offline order.
I created a new order in Shopify from the backend.
I can either scan the product barcode or manually select a product with “0” inventory and add it to the order.
I can also process the order for payment.
The product has no inventory, and I have unchecked “Continue selling when item out of stock”… but the purchase is permitted to go through.
Inventory for the product changes to “-1”.
Shouldn’t there be some alert or way to stop the purchasing of the product if it is out of stock?
Let me know if you have any questions
Thank you
Further to add - on website the product says “Sold out” but for manual orders the product can still be sold. Does unchecking the “Continue selling when item out of stock” just provide a front end solution with a sold out symbol? Does the rule follow through to the inventory or back end.
Did you ever get an answer? We are having the same issue.