Software allowed an order for more than the current inventory level

**HeleneWallis** · 18 Aug 2016, 06:55 PM

I went to bed with the inventory on a popular product showing "1" and woke up to find that someone had successfully ordered 3 of them. The system had changed the product status to "Out of Stock," which of course made it disappear from the product list. So I also had 20 emails from people wanting to know what had happened to it. I changed it back to zero, so it would at least show up as Sold Out.

How could someone have been able to order three when the system only showed one in stock? Shouldn't they have gotten a message that their order exceeded the available quantity? No changes have been made to any files involved here.

**DrByte** · 18 Aug 2016, 07:35 PM

What's your setting for: Admin->Configuration->Stock->Allow Checkout ?

**HeleneWallis** · 18 Aug 2016, 09:28 PM

It's set to show sold out. But I know what has to have happened. The customer already had 3 in her shopping cart when I changed the inventory level to 1. Classic record-locking situation. I've never had sufficient traffic on my site for that to be an issue before. Good thing I held out some extras or I wouldn't have been able to fill her order. I'm really more concerned about the fact that the stock status of the product was changed. I need to fix that so if the level drops below zero, and it's set to show sold out, it won't change the product to Not in Stock and make it disappear.

**dbltoe** · 19 Aug 2016, 12:42 AM

The Dr is talking about the setting used by sites that don't have a problem easily replenishing stock. It allows a customer to checkout with a quantity of zero or less. Yours should probably be set to false.

**mc12345678** · 23 Aug 2016, 05:34 PM

The settings shown in the attached screenshot (if legible) are such that stock should not be allowed to go "negative" and the product should remain displayed in the cart (store) when out-of-stock.

The fact that the stock was in the saved cart as part of login should not have allowed the customer to still checkout with that additional/unavailable stock if set as shown in this image. There is a final check of stock quantity in the checkout process to prevent that type of action if going out of stock is not permitted.

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**riomaha** · 7 Feb 2018, 10:39 PM

Hi, I know this is a somewhat old thread but I hope that we can come to a resolution.

A Zen-Cart store has been operating for 3-4 years now. Over the first 2 years or we have not had any issues with negative stock because we never used "subtract stock". Last year was the first time we enabled the feature along with the other settings

Code:

SSL is enabled on entire site, Check stock level =true, Check stock level =true, Check stock level=false, Check stock level =0, Show Sold Out Image in place of Add to Cart =0)

. With those settings, everything went just fine. Customers who tried to order when stock levels were at zero got a message that their files were uploaded but couldn't get their product added to cart or that their cart was empty.

This year, management felt the need to show a more descriptive message before a customer starts filling in all the order details. So we wanted to use the image "Out of Stock". So we enabled the feature and used a different picture. That is the only difference between last year and this year in terms of server and application configurations. We are using version 155A. What happened this year is for some reason, 4 customers of a single product managed to place orders when there were no stocks left (stock level -4). When I checked those orders, they were about between 30 seconds to about 3 minutes apart. (very lucrative product that literally sold out in less than 45 minutes). I am the system admin and application admin so I know what changes were made. The only change from last year is that only. We have always been using a Moneris Hosted Pay Page solution. We use other addons/plugins such as COWA, File Upload, Priority handling, and some shipping modules (this product that was -4 stock does not ship. So no shipping rules apply). I am baffled as to how they managed to place those orders. Luckily, we are able to accommodate those customers but I believe that shouldn't have happened.