Selective "continue selling when out of stock"

Store Feedback
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Topic summary

Main issue: Need channel-specific control for “continue selling when out of stock.” The requester sells certain items only on a pre-pay, special-order basis.

Requested feature:

  • Allow enabling out-of-stock sales only on selected channels (e.g., POS/invoices) while disabling it on the online store.
  • Let staff override zero-stock items in-store (POS = point of sale) and let invoiced customers pay, without exposing zero-stock purchases to the general online audience.

Current limitation:

  • The “continue selling when out of stock” setting is applied per product globally, not per sales channel.
  • To process pre-paid orders when inventory is 0, staff must manually adjust inventory levels to complete online checkout.

Response and actions:

  • Confirmation that the limitation exists and the setting is manual per product.
  • Recommendation to submit this feedback to Shopify Support for escalation to the developer team.

Status: No built-in solution yet; treated as a feature request. No timeline or workaround beyond manual inventory adjustments.

Summarized with AI on December 28. AI used: gpt-5.
1

Hello!

It’s my understanding that when assigning an item as “continue selling when out of stock”, there is no way to manage which channels this applies to. We have certain items in our store that are on an order-as-needed basis, meaning we ask clients to pay for the item before we order it.

When we send them an invoice to pre-pay, if the item is out of stock, we need to manually adjust our inventory so that they can complete the purchase online.

It would be great if there were a function to select which channels have access to the items marked as ‘continue selling when out of stock.’ For example, allowing our staff to override 0 stock items at the POS in-store and allowing those clients to pay for their 0 stock pre-order items through an invoice would be helpful - but it would be great to remove this option from the online store. We only need this function when a specific special order item is requested by an individual, but we don’t need everyone to have access to purchasing 0 stock items online.

This would be a very helpful feature in an upcoming update!

Thank you,

1 Like
2

Hi @SHWC !

That is correct. This current feature is added manually on each product and your feedback regarding this feature is incredible. I highly suggest that you forward your feedback to Shopify support team so they can also forward your feedback to Shopify developer team.