This is likely a really basic question - but I couldn’t find this described or discussed anywhere. A hub has asked me when a ‘sale’ occurs, and when stock is counted down. In this hub there are many consumers who access the shop in the last day of ordering, and there are many suppliers (200 ish) each with limited stock. (so many small scale farmers selling similar products). This hub runs different software now and are piloting OFN next week.
They asked me - if a customer is ordering, and maybe abandons an order and doesn’t check out yet - is the inventory/product list debited? (so the product is not available to any other buyer). Or - is the inventory debited only when a customer checks out and completes the order?
I have to admit I don’t really see why this matters much - but they were very insistant that it matters a lot to them. Thoughts? @sstead@CynthiaReynolds@mags@MyriamBoure - do any of you have experience with short supply items and buyer competition for them?
@tschumilas it does matter because if there are lots of “uncomplete” orders and the products in the uncomplete cart are “taken out” on the stock, if the cart is abandonned the products are back available, but it might be too late and the products might be unsold, so that can be a loss for the hub.
In OFN I think until you have proceeded to chekout the quantities are not taken out of the stock. But I’m curious @RohanM@sstead if you have multiple customer buying at the same time the last 2 leaks of a producer, how is this handled by the platform? Is it when you validate the cart and are on the checkout page that the quantities are “locked”? Or is it after checkout?
not sure if someone already knows the answer to this one, but if not it seems like something you could work out in about 5 minutes just by exploring with a small stock level and a couple of browser windows!
Quite right @Kirsten - I should have done so, but thought maybe someone had a quick answer - but now here it is for anyone else interested…
the stock level is adjusted after checkout. So
simultaneous shopping - nothing is debited from inventory until someone checks out - whoever checks out first gets the limited stock.
Stock adjustments appear to be independent of payment - so the stock is debited the same whether a shopper has paid electronically (paypal) or if they indicate they will pay at pickup. Either way it is a purchase of the item (so leave the shop manager with the question of how they want to handle ordered items that are not picked up)
And - if an order is cancelled by the shop owner - the products they ordered go back to inventory.
AND - if shopper 1 put a product in my cart - but don’t finish the order, and meanwhile, shopper 2 buys all the stock available, when shopper 1 returns, they get a very nice pop-up message naming the variant and telling them that it is no longer available. Those developers think of everything!