When "on hand" amount = 0, display the product as "out of stock"

[adele-ofn]

What is the need / problem?

Producers want to advertise their whole range, even those products which are out of stock. It would be valuable to have the products with 0 on hand remain in the shopfront with an "out of stock" message.

Which type of users does this problem affect (and how many, if known)?

• Shoppers
• Producers
• Hubs

Connected wishlist and discovery discussions* [list precedent discussions]

This would be a good follow-up to feature request #146 for "on hand" to display in the shopfront. In this case, the "out of stock" message would replace "0" when the count reaches this number.

Is Papercut or feature candidate?

Feature

[tschumilas]

Just noting this here for if/when this issue moves forward. We have many enterprises with long product lists (over 200 products). These enterprises use 'select all' + on hand greater than 0 , to determine which products show in the shop. If all products with no stock showed, the shops would be very cluttered. In my own shop, just as an example, 300 products are out of stock at any given time. Many are seasonal - there is no advantage to showing them to consumers all the time.

[RachL]

Papercut meeting 02/02/2022: we need to check if it's tricky or not to retrieve a product that is out of stock. To be researched before next papercut meetings.

UX wise: do users want to do that for ALL products. Cloning OCs can end up with lots of products with no on hand value?

[RonellaG]

Hi @RachL regarding your question

UX wise: do users want to do that for ALL products. Cloning OCs can end up with lots of products with no on hand value?

Could we make an option in Shop Preferences to select 'display “out of stock” in product listings'? Then we can include something like this in the info pop up box:

"Reminder to update on hand amounts for products when order cycles are cloned. If this option is selected and the on hand amount is zero, products in your shopfront will have “out of stock” displayed in the listing."

[kirstenalarsen]

@RonellaG I'm not sure that your answer above addresses @RachL's question - but my answer to the question would have to be "yes" because creating something that gave a user control over which products were displayed would increase complexity a lot.

So I think what we're proposing is that this be at the level of a shop, and set in Enterprise Settings / Shop Preferences, and then applies to all products in that order cycle. It would be a pretty big decision for existing shops to turn it on if they had been using stock to manage what appears in the past, but they would soon go into the order cycle and turn off the things they don't want to see

[tschumilas]

so we are proposing the on/off switch for this feature be in Enterprise Settings - - NOT in order cycle settings? is that right? So an enterprise would determine if they want to display product as 'out of stock' for ALL their order cycles? (It likely means enterprises will create multiple associated enterprises then - so they can set the switch differently for different shop fronts - but thats OK.) All of our large hubs manage what shows in the shop by stock, and then 'select all' - so that would be 1000s of products in the store showing 'out of stock' - so as long as they have a switch option somewhere - this is good.

[RonellaG]

@tschumilas do you think that one or more of the enterprises you are referring to would likely have an open order cycle where they would want the 'out of stock' showing for products and also have other open order cycles where they don't want the 'out of stock' showing and just want the products to disappear? Or do you think if they wanted to use the 'out of stock' option, they would use it across all order cycles and vice versa?

[tschumilas]

Two hubs here use 2 simultaneous order cycles as a way to take preorders basically. The first is a 'select all' - so they would not want 'out of stock' showing. The second OC has more limited items and these are selected at incoming. SO they WOULD want 'out of stock' showing for the second - and they don't use 'select all' in the second OC. So if the switch is attached to the enterprise, they couldn't do it.

BUT these are likely very edge use cases. What they are doing doesn't work well for preorders anyway - and I've been trying to convince them to use a set of google sheets for preorders, and then create those orders in the back office....

AND it just occurred to me - that items 'hidden' in inventory are not available to select in the incoming section of an OC. So - for an enterprise with lots of products that uses 'select all' at incoming, they would just move to managing their products in their inventory. Then they can effectively create an 'inactive' list of products (hide in inventory) and just keep a sub-list of products that they want to be actively selling not hidden. So then, with the enterprise switch on, they can still 'select all' and their hundreds of 'hidden' out of season..... products will not show as 'out of stock' in the shop. It seems ironic - because we've been shifting people away from using inventory - in anticipation of the product uplift and network features -- but I think this 'out of stock' messaging leads us to encourage the use of inventory for enterprises selling many products.... or cloning OCs....

[tschumilas]

So I think we can 'ignore' my concern - and push ahead with the 'switch' associated with enterprise - we can make that work.

[RonellaG]

Thanks for all that info @tschumilas 🙏🏼. Is that enough info for this to be an Aus priority for a papercut now?

[RachL]

There is still a bit of discussion in the team because all last papercuts which involved making a setting in the enterprise setting + a behavior on the shopfront, extended the dev time of a papercut.

I would be in favor of turning this one into a funded feature by adding also in the scope the ability for the shopper to filter the shopfront and see only products with stock on hand / on demand. It would be cleaner.

Or alternatively using this as a feature we give to our next senior dev as a first piece of work to work on.

It would still need to be designed and turned into an issue on the main repo before someone can pick it up, but I can do that once we agreed on the approach.

@lin-d-hop what would be your thoughts on this one?

[RonellaG]

@RachL is this going to be a funded feature that will be prioritised after the current funded features in the roadmap or could this be a funded papercut? From what you said it is more than a papercut, but could it be split into 2 papercuts that Aus could vote for? We have had another hub just ask for this functionality and I am trying to work out next steps including if we should approach them to consider funding this feature. Thanks for your patience if I am asking silly questions.

[lin-d-hop]

Doing this as a funded feature is a good idea @RonellaG. We'll need to estimate the size of it. I'm gearing up towards another funded feature round of proposals so hopefully we can estimate in the coming weeks...

[RonellaG]

Thanks for confirmation @lin-d-hop 🙏🏼