Pending orders and stock

What happens when a customer orders a sold-out product, how to set an expected date and how to supply it once stock arrives.

A customer can order a product you do not have right now. That line is left as a backorder: it moves no stock and is not charged until you supply it. Here is when that happens and what to do.

When a line becomes a backorder

• It is automatic. There is no setting to turn on: an active product that shows as Out of stock accepts backorders.
• If you set the product's stock badge to Always say out of stock, it stops accepting backorders and the customer sees that it is unavailable.
• In the catalogue, the customer sees the note Out of stock. Order it anyway and the seller will supply it when it is back and a button to add the product to a backorder.
• Under Orders, orders with a line like this carry the flag Has backorders and can be filtered with Only orders with backorder lines. The dashboard also shows a card Backorders waiting with the lines that are waiting.
• If you lower a quantity on an order that needs action, you can tick Backorder the rest so that what is missing stays as a backorder line instead of being lost. It is explained in Manage orders.

How it looks on the order

Lines supplied now and lines on backorder sit in separate blocks. The backordered ones appear underOn backorder: not in stock and move no stock until they are supplied. Their amounts are totalled apart, in a row of their own in the summary, and never added to the total: they are not charged today.

Set an expected date

1. Open the order. The lines with no stock appear in the block On backorder: not in stock.
2. On the line, fill in Expected date with today or a later day. A date that has already passed is refused. Around midnight, the day that counts as today is the UTC one, not the one in your time zone. With no date the line reads No date.
3. The customer sees that day as the expected date, or No date yet if you leave it empty, next to a reminder that it is a forecast and not a promise.

Supply the line when stock arrives

1. First restore the product count; see Stock.
2. Open the order and press Fulfil this line on the backordered line.
3. The line becomes an ordinary one and the app says so.

Good to know

• You can supply a line on orders that need action, are accepted, in preparation or on their way, but not on completed or declined ones.
• When you supply a line it stops being a backorder and the order totals are worked out again. Stock is taken only if the order was already accepted and the option Take stock when an order is accepted in Settings is on. With that option off, supplying moves no stock. On an order that needs action nothing moves either when you supply: the acceptance moves it (Manage orders).
• Supplying the same line twice does not take stock twice.
• Shipping an order with backorders outstanding is not blocked: it only asks first with Ship with backorders outstanding?. Those lines do not go out with the shipment.
• The figures in Sales by product do not count a backorder line until you supply it.
• The order email notice and the Print queue (in Orders, on the Print tab) mark these lines as Backordered: DO NOT PICK. The other documents are covered in Order confirmation and delivery note.