Show Out of Stock Products Doesn't Work

I would like to set some products to be "Out Of Stock" and yet still be displayed on the shop although people won't be able to checkout with these products. I tried using the feature in the Admin (under Stock): Products status in Catalog when out of stock should be set to 1 (Showing the product as Active). And yet, whenever I did this, the product would automatically be disabled and not showing in the shop. I wonder if this is because my products are virtual?

Is there any quick and easy way to do this for virtual products?
Basically I want the product status to be Active and Displayed, but people cannot purchase/checkout with them.

I've searched the forum and couldn't find any relevant solutions.
Thanks a lot for any help.

Zen Cart Version 1.3.8a
PHP Version 5.2.9

Be aware that Products currently marked as products_status 0 will not change based on this setting ... only future products when they sell out will remain in stock ...

Thanks, but it doesn't seem to work with products currently set at 1 (active) either. That's what I was going to do, to set currently Active/Available products to Out Of Stock while still enabling them to appear in the shop.

Thanks!

Out of Stock is products_status = 0 which means "do not show in the shop" ...

Set the Quantity to 0 and the Product Status to In Stock (products_status = 1) ...

Now with <= 1 quantity you see Sold Out ...

When you mark Product Status to Out of Stock that is products_status 0 which means do not show in the Shop, regardless of quantity ...

Oh I see. So basically it will set to "Sold Out" instead. Thanks so much for the clarification! Much appreciated :).

Linda,

I still can't make sense out this setting. It doesn't seem to actual control anything. I've carefully examined your explanation and performed tests, but cannot make this setting actually control anything by itself.

When editing a product (not this Admin >> Stock setting), I set it to In Stock (radio button) and Qty 0 (further down on that page), then Sold Out appears regardless of the value of this setting. When I set it to Out of Stock then the product is not publicly visible, regardless of this setting in Admin >> Stock, which is additionally strange because this setting explicitly says that it does something ***when ***the product is "out of stock."

Also, what are the words " ... when out of stock ... " supposed to actual mean in this setting? Are those words supposed to mean that the Out of Stock radio button is selected on the edit product page, or are those words supposed to mean that Products Quantity is set to zero on the edit product page?

These words are supposed to be the condition on which this setting is based and I am seeing that not only does this setting apparently control nothing, but it's not even clear what these words are referring to.

If you set a Product to Out of Stock ... you are setting the field products_status to 0 ...

If a Product is marked as Out of Stock ... products_status = 0 ... then it does NOT show in the Catalog ...

Product Quantity products_quantity when set to 0 means the Product is Quantity 0 ...

If the Product is set to In Stock products_status = 1 and products_quantity = 0 then the Product will show in the Catalog as Sold Out ...

What are you really wanting to do?

Do you want to see the Product as Sold Out in the Catalog when the products_quantity = 0?

Or, when the products_quantity goes to 0 do you want it removed from the Catalog?

Or, when the products_quantity **goes **to 0 do you want it removed from the Catalog?

thanks for your reply, Linda, I read another post of yours on this subject that may have cleared this up for me. In your other post, you describe the difference between existing products and future transactions. I'll offer a repeat here. I hope I get this right! :)

While fiddling with this setting with current products, nothing, at all, is going to happen. This setting (value 1) merely keeps Products Status as On (In Stock) during **checkout **when a product's status would **otherwise **turn to off (because qty, as a result of **that **checkout, has reached zero).

So, what it essentially does is **keep **the radio button 'In Stock' (as it appears in edit product) **selected *while checkout is occurring, instead of letting the product go to Out of Stock. By doing so, then the Sold Out image appears (if set, also in Stock settings). The alternative to the Sold Out image appearing, is to let the Add to Cart button and functionality appear, even though the product is really out of stock. What this would then do is alert the customer to the situation (on Shopping Cart page) and the customer could still purchase the product, with the store owner then having the product on "back order," meaning that the store owner takes the customer's money and owes the product to the customer at a future date.

*Another setting would also be at play here, Allow Checkout, which would either allow this "backorder" business, or simply stop checkout.

You can make Products where too many in the Order marks it in the Cart that it is too many and NOT ALLOW checkout ...

You can make Products where too many in the Order marks it in the Cart that it is too many but ALLOW checkout ...

You can make Products where if the Product Quantity <= 0 read Sold Out and cannot be added to the Order so that they CANNOT be ordered ...

You can make Products that when the Order is placed and the Quantity goes <= 0 that the Product is marked as products_status = 0 and the Product will disappear from the Catalog until you add more quantity and mark it as back in stock ...

so ... everything I said is either incorrect or meaningless ...

I am trying to get you to spell out what should happen in detail ...

You have a Product with Quantity 10 ...

Customer tries to order 12 ...

Are they allowed to checkout?

If they are allowed to checkout ... quantity goes to -2 ...

What should happen to the Product?

Should the Product have been set to Sold Out because the Quantity went to less than or equal to 0?

Or ... Should the Product be set to -2 and the next customer be allowed to order as many as they want?

Or ... Should the Product status be set to 0 so it does not show in the store until you add more quantity and set it back to In Stock?

I am trying to get you to spell out what should happen in detail ...

Probably the best thing that could happen is if the titling/labeling of settings in Admin could be reworked for ZC 2.0 (or 1.4?) so that 30-50% of them are not cryptic beyond comprehension. I imagine you are not personally responsible for the current sorry state of those affairs, but I also imagine you have a good deal of ongoing influence in that area, which is cool if your influence could further improve the product.

I'm not a stupid person, not even a mild moron, yet a good 30-50% of the time when I approach a setting in Admin with which I am unfamiliar, I sit there and stare at the screen thinking, "just what in the h*ll does THAT mean?!" And/or, "what, exactly, are the consequences of one choice over another?"

Would you like 50 or 100 examples of this? It seems that the titles were written so that programmers who were intimately familiar with them would know what each means, and more importantly DOES, with little or no thought given to whether a user of Zen Cart would know (1) what each MEANS and (2) HOW it interacts with other related settings.

Yeah, I know, buy the book, right?

No ... buying the book is a great help ... but if you could type slowly and tell me how you want your Products to work it would help ...

I am trying to present some of the many scenarios that you can have ...

I do not know what you really want ...

You need to spell it out ...

Take a Product with Quantity 10 and spell out:

What happens if someone should try to buy 12?
1 Are they allowed?

2 Should they be told too many and have to change it to 10?

If they buy 12, should it now be Sold Out?

If they buy 12, should it now disappear from the Catalog until you add quantity and put it back in stock?

What happens if they buy all 10?

1 Should the Product be allowed to be purchased now that the quantity in 0?

2 Should it display as Sold Out?

3 Should it disappear from the Catalog until there is stock again?

With this thread and the other one where you mentioned the sql command for setting zero qty products back to "In Stock," so that Sold Out image will show, I now understand what to do and how to do it.

It all started with that command in Admin Stock that I thought I could use to make all the products already sold out show the Sold image. That is, I thought that command would do the trick, i.e., I would not have to edit each sold-out product to be "In Stock," but with zero qty, so the Sold image would show on product info. But then I discovered through your other thread where you make it clear that that setting in Admin could not make that global change to products already sold-out.

So now I know that I can use that sql command to flip the switch to In Stock for already sold-out, zero qty items. That, with the Show Sold Out Image setting will take care of that task. Then, I will set "Products status in Catalog when out of stock should be set to" to a value of 1, so that future sell-outs of a product will also leave the Sold Out image on the Product Info page.

It's cool ... problem solved ... thank you.

Thanks for the update that you have things working now ... :smile:

I'm having some difficulty swimming around this forum.

Under config/Stock I have product status in catalog when out of stock set to 0.

In my live site, everything goes as I would expect - when a product hits zero it disappears off the catalog. (this is what I want to happen.)

However, on my test site, a product that is sold out still shows up in the catalog, along with a sold out sign.

Yet the config/stock settings are identical.

I checked the test site phpMyAdmin, and the zero is indeed present in that config setting.

The strangest thing - anything I've done on the live site has been first done on the test site. Perhaps I shouldn't be concerned since the live site is doing what I want - but I am concerned that I've done something wrong on the test site that I'll end up passing over.

Both sites are zc 1.3.9h; quite a few mods. https://www.meafordwool.com

So I guess what I'm asking - is there some other setting somewhere in the config menu that might be counteracting the Stock setting. And/or can someone direct me to the zc file that I can look at to see if I mucked something up.

What that setting does is that when an order is made and the products_quantity falls to <= 0 the products_status is set to 0 which makes the Product be "Out of Stock" meaning not show in the Catalog ...

Changing that setting only affects Products based on future Orders ... it does not change the current setting for the products_status on Products where products_quantity <= 0 ...

You can do this manually or you could run this SQL in the Tools ... Install SQL Patches ...

UPDATE products SET products_status = 0 WHERE products_quantity <= 0;

NOTE: make a backup of your database before running commands like this ...

Thanks. I still struggle with English language (even though it is my mother tongue!)

But I 'think' what you mean, is that setting the Stock to come off the catalog when at zero, means any stock that becomes zero after that setting has been made, so wouldn't apply to stock that was already at zero but present on the catalog before changing this config setting.

The items that showed on my test catalog with a stock level of zero were products that I had tested assorted mods with and I had actually manually edited the stock quantity to zero on the product info form.

I just replicated that with another product.

So, expressed another way, it would seem that setting the config/stock to not show the product in the catalog if zero stock remains applies only to products added after the setting is toggled AND to products that the cart changes to a zero, not stock whose quantity was manually adjusted to zero on the product page.

This is good to know as I sometimes manually adjust the product quantity after a sale in person or on the phone.

Hi There,

I have a scenario whereby I accept a feed from a supplier which basically works like, if they are on the list they are in stock (No qty supplied) if they are not on the list they are out of stock.

I then import this list using a store manger (which allows me to check the mark as out of stock button) however it appears that all my products out of stock turn red and do not display.

How can I set these to show as sold out throught the store, irrespective of qty, I would immagine. Simply I feel I need to do this so that items display when someone finda a link to them on the www. I believe it better to show something rather than a product not found response..which I noted in my google webmaster tools as countless 404 errors....which cant be good for SEO.
Thanks
RR

Hello,

I am using zencart.1.3.9 with stock by attributes 1.4.13,

When at the shopping cart page I get the message at the top saying "Products marked with Sorry, we are currently out of stock of this item are out of stock or there are not enough in stock to fill your order.
Please change the quantity of products marked with (Sorry, we are currently out of stock of this item). Thank you"

But in the cart area that shows the items, it does NOT show which item is out of stock. It is a problem because I have multiple items selling and the customer does not know what item is out. Below are my stock
attribute settings. Any Suggestions?

Check stock level true
Subtract stock true Info
Allow Checkout false Info
Mark product out of stock Sorry, we are currently out of stock of this item Info
Stock Re-order level 5 Info
Show available stock level in cart when less than order true Info
Display Images in Admin false Info
Products status in Catalog when out of stock should be set to 0 Info
Show Sold Out Image in place of Add to Cart 1 Info
Product Quantity Decimals 0 Info
Show Shopping Cart - Delete Checkboxes or Delete Button 3 Info
Show Shopping Cart - Update Cart Button Location 3 Info
Show New Products on empty Shopping Cart Page 1 Info
Show Featured Products on empty Shopping Cart Page 2 Info
Show Special Products on empty Shopping Cart Page 3 Info
Show Upcoming Products on empty Shopping Cart Page 4 Info
Show Notice of Combining Shopping Cart on Login

my site can be found at and if you wish to test, and the item I am out of is
http://www.ruminaformoms.com/catalog/index.php

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