Substract product quantity when added to cart

Hallo, I am running on a fresh install of Zen Cart 1.3.8a building a store with products that are not available in quantities. Usually, there might be one or two.

If a customer adds one product in its basket, the quantity is not substracted from the product's page. This means that if another client simultaneously puts a product in its cart, at the end one of them will be disappointed.

Is there a way I could guarantee that everything existing in the basket will be available at the checkout?

Kind regards,
orange_juice

The system does this for you at each point throughout checkout, because at any point along the way a cart can be abandoned. Stock is only reduced at the very end of the process after a succesful checkout.

Thanx for the very promt reply.

What I want to avoid, is to have one client putting an existing product in its cart and then in the middle of the checkout to receive a message "the product is out of stock", just because someone else was a step ahead.

It would be fair, just as in a real store, when someone holds a product in his hand (although he might dump it somewhere until he reaches the cachier) noone else can buy it. (especially when the majority of products is in a limited number)

Is this something feasible?

Kind regards,
orange_juice

There are only two ways to subtract from stock, and neither is a perfect solution.

Zencart, along with every other cart I'm familiar with, subtracts the item when the checkout is complete. The drawback is that two people can have the single remaining item in their respective carts, and one will be disappointed.

The other way would be to subtract the item when it is placed in a cart. The downside to that is that someone could come to your site, login, place the last item in his cart, then leave, tying up that product for quite a while.

I think the standard Zencart method is the best compromise.

Indeed this seems not to be a bad choice.

I will give it a try and see what happens in real market activity with this issue.

At least I am aware of it and I will find a way to notify my custommers that all the products in low stock are served on a "be quick or be dead" basis! :P LOL :D

Kind regards,
orange_juice