- Managing Inventory with Spark Pay online stores #201906990

You can track and manage your inventory by enabling inventory tracking and defining how each product availability status affects your inventory.

There are three steps to setting up inventory management:

Enable the inventory tracking feature
Define how inventory is tracked and product statuses displayed when inventory changes
Assign inventory related product settings through the product editor or product import tool

Step 1: Enable Inventory Tracking

Browse to Settings > Catalog > General

Select the Store Name: This setting is store-specific, so be sure to select the correct store from the drop down if you are working with multiple stores.
Enable Inventory Tracking by checking the box
Click Save

Step 2: Define how inventory is tracked and product statuses displayed when inventory changes.

Beneath the track inventory option there are several important store-specific options.

The first, "Remove from Inventory When," controls when items are deducted from inventory.

There are three choices:

Ordered - Inventory is removed as soon as the order is placed.
Paid - Inventory is removed when the order's payment is approved.
Shipped - Inventory is removed when the order is marked shipped.

The remaining options control the default stock statuses that products will be set to when certain criteria are met.

Note: If you haven't already defined Product statuses, please click here to read the article on How to Setup Product Statuses. This is not required, but if you'd like to use more than the default status settings for displaying product statuses as inventory changes, you need to define them before relating it to inventory. The four default statuses are: In Stock, Back Order, Discontinued and Out of Stock

Default Out of Stock Status - Product will be set to this status when its stock reaches 0 and its current status does not allow back orders.
Default In Stock Status - Product will be set to this status when its stock goes from less than or equal to 0 to greater than 0.
Default Back Order Status - Product will be set to this status when its stock reaches 0 or below and its current status allows back orders.
Default Discontinued Status - Product will be set to this status when its stock reaches 0 and the product is currently marked discontinued.

This completes defining how inventory is tracked and product statuses to display as inventory changes.

Step 3: Assign Inventory Related Product Settings

These settings can be assigned on the product editor through the admin console or imported in a .csv file through the product import tool.

Stock Status – The current status of the item. This is automatically changed by the inventory system according to the settings above, but it can be changed here manually as well.
NOTE: Any manual changes to a product’s stock count made from the product editor WILL NOT trigger automatic status updates. Example, If you manually change your quantity on hand from 5 to 0 your default status will not change to 'Out of Stock' automatically (as defined in your inventory status changes in Step 2); This is to avoid conflict if you may have made a manual change to your product status on the product editor. To avoid conflicts and to give you complete control over the product status through the product editor, the status change will not trigger automatically.
Discontinued – If checked, this item’s status will be set to the default discontinued status when its stock reaches 0.
Min Qty – The minimum quantity of this product that can be ordered.
Max Qty – The maximum quantity of this product that can be ordered.
Non-Inventory – If checked, inventory will not be tracked for this product.
On Hand Qty – The current stock count for this product. To display on hand quantity on the product details page, the setting needs to be enabled under Themes > Active Theme. Please click here to read the article on how to enable this.
On-Order Qty – The amount of this product currently on order. The available quantity of a product is the On Hand Qty + the On-Order Qty.
ETA Date – Date to optionally show on the product details page (controlled by a theme setting on the Product Details Advanced Settings page)

Mass Editing

Inventory can be edited en mass via the Product Import (Tools > Data Import > Product Import) or by using the Inventory Editor (Catalog > Inventory Editor).

Product Import Tool: You can adjust inventory count by using the NumberInStock column on the Product Import spreadsheet. If you would like product status changes to be triggered on import based on status changes defined in Step 2, you need to select a store in the import setup process.

select the Store in the import setup process if you would like product status changes to be triggered based on "NumberInStock" being imported.

Variant Inventory

If you have a product that comes in different sizes, colors, or other similar options and you would like to keep track of the inventory for each individual combination (example: large blue shirts), variant inventory can be used. To learn more about variant inventory and how to set it up, click here.