Maintaining accurate inventory records is crucial for tracking the quantity of each product in your store. This accuracy enables you to prevent overselling and ensures you can replenish your stock before it runs out.
You can specify stock quantity for every product in your store, and it will automatically be reduced once a product is ordered. When the quantity of a certain product reaches zero, this product will receive a Sold Out label and become unavailable for purchase unless you enable pre-orders for it.
You also have the option to receive an email notification when the quantity of a product runs low, allowing you ample time to restock.
You can also manage stock levels for product options (like colors or sizes) if you create variations out of them. Every product variation (e.g., size L, or a Yellow XL) can be tracked if it has its own SKU and quantity.
Table of content
- Enabling stock tracking for products
- Setting up low-stock alerts
- Displaying stock status and quantity on the storefront
- Setting default behavior for out of stock products
- Understanding stock changes in your store
- Updating product stock levels in bulk
- Viewing your inventory
Enabling stock tracking for products
When adding new products to your store, they are initially set with an unlimited quantity by default. To activate stock tracking for a product, you must specify the number of units you have in stock.
When customers place orders for a product (and the order payment status is either Awaiting Payment or Paid), the product’s stock gets automatically reduced by the number of units ordered. Once that product’s stock reaches zero, it is labeled as “Out of stock” in your store admin. As for the storefront, you can choose one of the following out of stock behavior options for each product:
- Mark the product as “Sold Out” and hide it from your storefront so that customers don’t browse into it. The product will be unavailable for purchase.
- Mark the product as “Out of stock”/“Sold Out” and show it on your storefront. The product will be unavailable for purchase, but customers will know that you sell it.
- Make the sold out product available for pre-orders.
Learn more about the basics of inventory tracking in your store →
To set quantity in stock for a product:
- From your store admin, go to Catalog → Products.
- Open the product you want to edit.
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Find the Stock Control block on the right:
- Click Manage stock control.
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Enter the number of items you have in stock:
- (optional) Change the default out of stock behavior for this product and specify when you want to receive low-stock notifications.
- Save the changes.
You can use Bulk Product Editor to set the quantity in stock, out of stock behavior, and the quantity when a low-stock notification should be sent for several products in bulk.
You can also monitor the stock levels of a product based on its options, such as color and size (for example: Yellow XL), and accept pre-orders for these variations. To do so, you'll need to create variations for your available product options and specify the SKU, stock quantity, and out-of-stock behavior for each variation. Learn more about managing stock of product options →
Setting up low-stock alerts
To ensure timely replenishment of a product's stock, you can choose to receive an automated message from your store notifying you when the stock of a product has reached a specified limit.
Simply enter the low stock value at which you would like to receive a notification, and the store will automatically send you an email when your product reaches this limit.
To specify product quantity for low-stock alerts:
- From your store admin, go to Catalog → Products.
- Open the product you want to edit.
- Find the Stock Control block on the right.
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Click Manage stock control:
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Enter the number of items left in stock at which you want to receive the Low Stock notice (by default it is “1”):
- Save the changes.
You can specify the low stock level for several products in bulk with the help of Bulk Product Editor.
The low stock notifications will be sent to the email address that you specified in Settings → Notifications, in the Admin email addresses block. You can specify another email there or add several email addresses (e.g., yours and an email address of a person who manages your inventory).
Please note that this address is used for all your admin notifications, and not only for the “Low stock” notification.
When you receive a low stock notice in your inbox, you can click the Re-stock product button to quickly reach that product’s editing page and update the stock quantity once it’s been replenished.
To stop receiving emails about low product stock, you can disable the Low stock notification in your store admin, in the Settings → Notifications page (this setting affects all products). To remove low stock notifications for just a certain product, go to that product’s page, select the stock control block, and set a zero value in the “Send me a note when the quantity in stock reaches” section. This way, the notification will be sent only when the product becomes out of stock in your store.
If necessary, you can customize your low stock notification template (click Edit in the Low stock notification section in Settings → Notifications). See our article about editing message templates in your store.
Displaying stock status and quantity on the storefront
On product pages within your store, you have the option to display the 'in stock' status, the actual quantity available, and include a quantity field that enables customers to specify the number of units they wish to add to their cart.
Displaying the "In stock" label and product quantity
By default, the “In stock” label is displayed for all the products in your store: for the ones with unlimited stock and for the ones with enabled stock control. If you’re using stock control, your product pages can also show information about the current stock levels.
You can hide this information from the product pages if you want (for example, if you sell services).
To show/hide the “In stock” label and quantity:
- From your store admin, go to Design.
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Scroll down to the Sidebar section and find the "Add to Bag" button menu:
- Check or uncheck the box next to Stock availability labels (and next to Number of items in stock if you also wish to show/hide that information).
Displaying a quantity field on product pages
If your customers frequently order multiple units of the same product, or if you offer quantity discounts, you can incorporate a quantity box directly onto your product pages.
To show/hide the quantity field:
- From your store admin, go to Design.
- Scroll down to the Sidebar section.
- Find the “Add to Bag” button menu.
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Check or uncheck the box next to Product quantity:
Setting default behavior for out of stock products
When the quantity of your products reaches zero, there are three possible options for how they can be handled. They can remain displayed on the storefront, be hidden from it, or they can become available for pre-orders. You can choose one of these out of stock behavior options while enabling stock tracking for individual products.
By default, all the new products that you create in your store are set to remain displayed on the storefront when sold out. Their quantity is marked as “Out of stock”/“Sold Out” and the “Buy Now” and “Add to Bag” buttons for these products become hidden so that they can’t be ordered:
You have the option to customize this default setting and specify the behavior to be applied to all new products in your store when they go out of stock. This streamlines the setup process and saves time on individual product configurations.
To set default behavior for all out of stock products in your store:
- From your store admin, go to Settings → General → Cart & Checkout.
- From the Default out of stock products behavior dropdown, choose your option: Show on storefront, Hide from storefront, or Show and allow pre–order.
- Save the changes.
That’s it! Now when you create a new product and specify its quantity in stock, the value in the When out of stock dropdown on the product page in your store admin will be set to the one that you’ve selected on the Cart & Checkout page. You can change it for individual products if you want.
To change out of stock behavior for several products in your store in bulk, go to Catalog → Products → Mass Update → Update Stock → Set Out of Stock Behavior and choose your option in the popup. You can also use our Bulk Product Editor for that.
Out of stock products that are hidden from storefront are still visible by direct link (though customers can’t add them to cart). To make these products completely inaccessible, you can disable them in your store admin.
Understanding stock changes in your store
If you are using stock control, the stock for products and product variations is changed according to the following rules:
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If a customer adds products or product variations to cart in your online store and checks out, their stock is reduced by the number of items ordered. A customer cannot order an item if its quantity has already reached “0” (unless pre-orders are enabled for this product or product variation).
When an order for a product is placed in your store, that order’s payment status becomes either Awaiting Payment or Paid. If later you change the payment status for an order to Cancelled or Refunded, the quantity of the products from that order will be automatically returned to their stock. For example, if you have 8 units of a product in stock and then cancel an existing order for 2 units, you will have 10 units in stock.
Note that if you mark an order as Partially refunded, the stock of the purchased products in your store will not change. -
If you create an order on behalf of a customer, product stock is reduced.
If your manual order includes an out-of-stock product or a product quantity that exceeds your stock, that product's stock will become negative in your store. For example, product quantity was equal to “1” and you manually placed an order for 3 units of it, as the result the product stock becomes equal to “-2”. In case pre-orders are enabled for this product, the stock will be equal to “0”, and 2 units will be considered to be pre-ordered. -
If you place an order for a product from an abandoned cart, its stock is reduced.
If the order features a product that has become out-of-stock in your store by the moment you place the order for an abandoned cart, or if the quantity in stock is lower than the quantity in the order, the stock will become negative. In this case, you will see a special “Oversold by” notice when placing an order. If pre-orders are enabled for this product, its stock will be set equal to “0”, and a corresponding number of units will be considered to be pre-ordered.
If your stock goes into negative, you'll need to either procure more items to fulfill the order or cancel/refund the order if you're unable to provide the additional items.
Please note that if you edit the product quantity for existing orders, the change won't affect the in-stock quantity for these items in your store. You will need to take care of the stock changes yourself (e.g., update the stock manually or provide additional items, if needed).
Updating product stock levels in bulk
You can always update the stock of individual products on their pages in Catalog → Products. In case you want to update the stock of your products or their variations in bulk, you can use the following options:
- You can instantly apply stock updates to several products at once using the Mass Update option. For that, go to Catalog → Products, tick all the products you want to update, then click Mass Update → Update Stock → Update Stock for Selected and enter new quantity.
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You can quickly update the stock of products and/or their variations using the Bulk Product Editor tool:
- You can use the built-in import tool to update the stock quantity of products and product variations with a CSV file. See a case study about updating product stock with import →
If you sell across multiple channels, you can manage all inventory in one place with the help of the Orderhive app. Orderhive syncs your inventory through each of your channels and unifies inventory and order data in one single back-end. The integrated barcode functionality helps you scan, save and search for SKUs (products) across your warehouses.
Viewing your inventory
You can use several options to view the current stock of products and product variations in your store:
- First, you can always check the stock of a product on its page in Catalog → Products (in the Options → Variations tab, if the product has variations).
- Second, you can control the stock of your products and product variations using Bulk Product Editor. As the Bulk Product Editor allows you to view multiple products and their stock all at once, you can also use this page to check inventory. Just choose the products you need (or select all the items in your store) for editing in Catalog → Products, enter the Bulk Product Editor and scroll the table down to see whether you need to refill the stock.
You can also use the Out of Stock filter on the Catalog → Products page in your store admin to get the list of out-of-stock products. This filter displays all the products that are currently out of stock:
A product with variations appears under the Out of Stock filter only if all variations of this product are out of stock. If some variations of this product are still in stock, the product will not appear under the Out of Stock filter.