Inventory Tracking Tutorial?

[kimical]

I've searched the boards and most of the post that cover this are from years ago and seem to be outdated:

I would like to implement the ShopSite inventory tracking (not using a third party) but I can not seem to find a tutorial on how to do this. Could some please help!

[ShopSite Lauren]

Inventory tracking is available in ShopSite Pro. To turn this feature on you can go to Preferences > Inventory Tracking and turn the radio button to "on." Also on this screen you can configure where email notifications to the merchant are sent. For example, an email can be sent when you reach low stock on a product, out of stock on a product, or when a custom wants to purchase something that is out of stock. Once you have the settings the way you want, save changes. Now all you need to do is set your inventory and out of stock levels for your products. Go to Products > Edit Product Info. There is a section for inventory tracking, If you enter the quantity on hand, ShopSite will keep track and deduct from that quantity when products are purchased. If you do not specify an out of stock limit, ShopSite will allow customers to continue to purchase a product even when it is out of stock. This is good for back orders. If you do not want customers to be able to purchase a product once it has reached a specific limit, enter that amount in the out of stock field. Once the quantity on hand equals the out of stock limit, ShopSite will not allow customers to purchase the product. When a customer wants to add the product to the cart they will receive a message saying the product is out of stock.

[Paula]

I am not seeing this button. Has this changed since this post?

Inventory tracking is available in ShopSite Pro. To turn this feature on you can go to Preferences > Inventory Tracking and turn the radio button to "on."

[Jim]

If you have a ShopSite Pro level store then the feature is found where Lauren mentioned, Preferences > Inventory Tracking. There is a whole screen of configuration information includeing enabling ShopSite Inventory Tracking which is a radio button in the section at the top of the page.

Once you have that enabled and the other settings configured you will need to go the the Products > Edit Product Info screen and enter the Quantity on Hand, Low Stock threshold: and Out of Stock limit:

[Paula]

I see that now...this is more to alert the buyer that an item is low on stock, etc. But is there a place to have the number of SKU for each item readily available, sort of like a master list, with the number of available items next to each item? Or do we need to look at each individual item to get the count?

[ShopSite Nicole]

Paula,

It is possible in the ShopSite Pro package to download your products database. During the download, you can tell ShopSite if you only wish to see specific fields (such as name, SKU, and quantity on hand). This is one way to get a sort of "master list" for what your ShopSite inventory is of each product.

[Paula]

With regards to putting an item out of stock, I was able to get the Out of Stock message to show in the cart. 1. But is there a way to get the message to appear on the More Info page and/or Category pages? 2. And is there a way to program the system to automatically pull an item from the store when it's out of stock?

[Paula]

Found it, thanks.

Paula,

It is possible in the ShopSite Pro package to download your products database. During the download, you can tell ShopSite if you only wish to see specific fields (such as name, SKU, and quantity on hand). This is one way to get a sort of "master list" for what your ShopSite inventory is of each product.

[Paula]

I think this was missed....got mixed in with the flurry of questions I'm sending:

With regards to putting an item out of stock, I was able to get the Out of Stock message to show in the cart. 1. But is there a way to get the message to appear on the More Info page and/or Category pages? 2. And is there a way to program the system to automatically pull an item from the store when it's out of stock?

[Jim]

Since the pages are generated as html and sit on the server in that format there is no way to have the products display "Out of Stock" until a publish is completed and the static html pages replaced.

But you could code a custom template to look at the Quantity on Hand value of the product and if that is 0 or at the Out of Stock Limit level replace the add to cart code with text saying "Out of Stock". I think this has been discussed in the forum before so try doing a search and see if something turns up.

[Paula]

Jim

Yes, I saw that discussion. Would prefer to avoid coding if possible.

You said "Since the pages are generated as html and sit on the server in that format there is no way to have the products display "Out of Stock" until a publish is completed and the static html pages replaced."

Does this mean that there is a way to display an "Out of Stock" message on a More Info page? That's fine even if it means I have to re-publish.

I looked under Inventory Tracking, and the only mention of More Info pages is under Cascading Pages. I tried clicking both buttons, but no message.

[Jim]

Avoiding coding will not allow you to display Out of Stock since none of the built in templates do that.

You would need to modify the template for either the Product more information page or the section used for the product on regular store pages if you want to display the out of stock message.

Here is some code that I found in a forum post about just what you are wanting to do, that shows how to do it.
http://support.shopsite.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=8961&p=23551&hilit=+Out+of+Stock+template#p23553

Code: Select all

[-- if PRODUCT.QuantityOnHand "0" --]
<img src="[-- OUTPUT_DIRECTORY_URL --]/media/design/outofstock.jpg">
[-- else --]
<input type="submit" value="[-- ADDTEXT --]">
[-- end_if --]

You would need to find the section of code that is outputting the Add to Cart button (or text in the above example) and put the If statements in like the example has. The code would probably be different depending on the template you are using. Here is the code from the INCLUDE file Product-AddToCartButton

Code: Select all

[-- IF VAR.AddButtonGraphic --]
  <input type="image" class="add" src="[-- OUTPUT_DIRECTORY_URL --]/[-- VAR.Media --]/[-- VAR.AddButtonGraphic --]" name="Add to Cart" alt="Add to Cart">
[-- ELSE_IF ADDIMAGE? --]
  <input type="image" [--ADDIMAGE--]>
[-- ELSE --]
  <input class="add" type="submit" value="[-- ADDTEXT --]">
[-- END_IF --]

In this code it determines if the Add to Cart is a button or a link, it then displays the appropriate image or text. To change this code you would simply enclose that text in the ELSE part of the [-- IF PRODUCT.QuantityOnHand "0" --] conditional statement .

Code: Select all

# I added the next 3 lines to the above code
 [-- IF  PRODUCT.QuantityOnHand "0" --]
   <img src="[-- OUTPUT_DIRECTORY_URL --]/media/design/outofstock.jpg">
[-- ELSE --]
# start original code
[-- IF VAR.AddButtonGraphic --]
  <input type="image" class="add" src="[-- OUTPUT_DIRECTORY_URL --]/[-- VAR.Media --]/[-- VAR.AddButtonGraphic --]" name="Add to Cart" alt="Add to Cart">
[-- ELSE_IF ADDIMAGE? --]
  <input type="image" [--ADDIMAGE--]>
[-- ELSE --]
  <input class="add" type="submit" value="[-- ADDTEXT --]">
[-- END_IF --]
# end original code.
# I added the next line to the code
[-- END_IF --]


It really isn't that difficult to make the modiification, you just need to find where the add to cart button/link are out put and change each of those places. It can be in the Define Product section, Define MoreInformationPage section and in the Define Subproduct section or in all of them. So be sure your change each location.

[ShopSite David]

On More Info pages displaying the real-time inventory count, low stock message, and out of stock message is now available in ShopSite Pro v11 sp2. See the More Info section in the help documentation http://www.shopsite.com/help/11.2/en-US/sc/pro/inventory.html