What I want is very simple and yet so far I'm not seeing how to do this;

I want to be able to go in and set an item in the store to show as out of stock and have it where they cannot add to cart.

I do not want ZenCart to track the inventory because we sell both online and over the phone so inventory tracking is off, subtract from inventory is false etc.

But it would seem that the function to allow an item to be shown in the catalogue when out of stock does not work, it is set to '1' which means to show out of stock items.

But when I set the item out of stock in the edit screen it automatically turns it off completely. Surely the 'out of stock' parameter is a distinct and separate function to the button that turns the item on or off ?

Sooooooo, how do I do this? I have searched and only found threads about people wanting the opposite effect (to remove the item from the catalogue) and threads implying that none of that works unless you have Zen Cart tracking the inventory, which is ludicrous