New: automatic stock management in your store

Version 4.2.8 of WebAcappella Fusion brings automatic stock management to your store. Choose “Automatically managed stock” in a product's settings, and your store keeps a real count: every order placed on your site removes the items sold, variant by variant, and the product goes out of stock when everything is gone.

If you sell one-of-a-kind pieces, small batches, or seats (classes, workshops, courses, events), this is the feature that matters: a 10-seat workshop no longer gets an eleventh registration, and you no longer have to watch your orders to manually disable a product before it sells twice.

“Limited stock” didn't limit stock

Let's start with a confession. The store already offered a “Limited stock” setting, with a number to enter. Its name promised stock; it only limited the quantity a customer could order at once. The number never decreased: with “Limited stock: 10”, every customer could order 10 units, the eleventh customer included.

This setting is now called “Maximum quantity per order”, and the product page on your site shows “Maximum 10 per order” instead of “Limited stock: 10”. How it works doesn't change. The “Stock status” setting, in the “General” tab of the product settings, now offers four choices:

Setting	What happens on your site
“No stock limit”	The product can be ordered in any quantity. No count is kept.
“Out of stock”	The product remains visible but can't be added to the cart.
“Maximum quantity per order”	A per-cart cap that never decreases: every customer can order this maximum.
“Automatically managed stock”	Real stock, kept for each variant, that decreases with every order placed on your site.

Stock for each variant

Stock is kept for each product variant. A T-shirt available in several colors and sizes has stock for each combination: red in M selling out doesn't stop you from selling blue in M. A product without variants has a single stock. And for a class offered on several dates, making each date a variant gives each one its own number of seats.

Setup

Managed stock is stored on your server, not in your project. So two conditions must be met before you start:

• Your site uses HTTPS, and its address is entered with https:// in the publishing settings. WebAcappella refuses to read or modify your stock over an unsecured connection. Most hosting providers offer a free certificate.
• Your site has been published at least once with WebAcappella Fusion 4.2.8 or newer: this publication is what installs stock management on your server.

Then, for each product sold in limited quantity:

1. Open the product settings, “General” tab.
2. In the “Stock status” section, choose “Automatically managed stock”.
3. Click “Manage online stock...”. The “Online stock” window shows one row per variant.
4. Enter the stock for each variant, then click OK.
5. Confirm the product settings with OK, then publish your site.

The product itself doesn't need to be online yet: you can set its stock before its first publication. A variant that isn't on your site yet is marked “Not published yet”, and the stock entered for it applies as of the next publication.

Restock without republishing

Why store stock on the server rather than in the project? Imagine the opposite: you fix a typo on your home page, you publish, and your stock reverts to the value entered three weeks ago. Three weeks of sales forgotten. With stock on the server, republishing never resets it to its starting value: it only changes through orders and through you.

The “Online stock” window shows the stock of your published site, as your customers see it when you open it. Change a value and click OK: your site is updated immediately, without republishing. That's how you add seats, restock an item, or correct a count. The “Refresh” button reloads the values from the site.

The “Online payment in progress” column counts items reserved by customers who are currently paying by credit card or PayPal. You don't have to deduct them yourself: they're removed from stock once payment is confirmed, or become available again after 30 minutes if the payment is abandoned.

When stock goes down, when it goes back up

Stock is reserved when the order is created, that is, when the customer reaches the payment step. If there isn't enough stock at that moment, the order isn't created and the cart tells the customer which item to adjust. After that, everything depends on the payment method and what you do with the order:

Situation	Effect on stock
Order paid by bank transfer, check, Swiss QR-bill, or cash on delivery	Items are removed from stock as soon as the order is created.
Order paid by credit card or PayPal	Items are reserved for 30 minutes, then removed from stock when payment is confirmed. If the customer abandons, they become available again.
Order canceled in order management, or payment set to “Payment error” or “Refunded”	Items are returned to stock.
Order deleted while neither paid nor shipped (duplicate, test order, transfer never received)	Items are returned to stock.
Order deleted when already paid, shipped, or delivered	Stock doesn't change: a sold item doesn't return to stock.
Order canceled, then restored	Items are taken again, even if stock ran out in the meantime.

The 30 minutes for online payment solve a classic case: two customers want the last unit. The first to reach payment reserves it; the second sees there are none left, instead of paying for an item that's already gone. And if the first one abandons on their bank's page, the item becomes available again on its own, with no action on your part.

Restoring a canceled order whose items were resold in the meantime is still possible: it's your call. Stock then drops below zero, and order management warns you that a seat or item has already been sold to someone else. It's up to you to check that you can fulfill both orders, or to adjust stock from WebAcappella. Saving an order again without changing its status, however, never counts anything twice.

What your customers see

• The product page shows available stock: “Available stock: 7”. Items being paid for online by other customers are already deducted.
• When the cart already contains all available stock, the add-to-cart button is replaced by “Maximum quantity reached”.
• If stock drops while the customer is filling their cart, the cart tells them and blocks the order until they adjust the quantity.
• When everything is sold, the page shows “Out of stock” and the product can no longer be added to the cart.

What about backups?

Stock is stored on your server, in the /wa_shop_database/stock/ folder, alongside orders. Like them, it isn't part of your WebAcappella project backup. The order backup offered by order management contains the entire /wa_shop_database/ folder, stock included: keep this in mind before switching hosting providers.

In summary

• The new “Automatically managed stock” setting keeps real stock that decreases with every order placed on your site.
• Stock is kept variant by variant and defaults to 100: set it before opening sales.
• The “Manage online stock...” button shows your site's actual stock and changes it immediately, without republishing.
• Republishing your site never resets stock to its starting value, and a correction on your part can't erase a sale.
• Canceling an order returns its items to stock; an online payment reserves them for 30 minutes, long enough to pay.
• “Limited stock” is now called “Maximum quantity per order”: it's a per-cart cap, not stock.
• You need an HTTPS site and a publication with version 4.2.8 or newer.

Your store can finally count. Take five minutes to switch your limited products to managed stock, enter the real numbers, and let it keep the books for you.