Selling out of stock products

An item is out of stock when inventory is tracked and the inventory level is at zero or below. By default, customers can't purchase an item until you adjust the inventory levels to add more stock.

You might want to let customers buy out of stock items for any of the following reasons:

• You have products available for preorder.
• You have stock coming soon and you want to continue selling before it arrives.
• You want to sell first and then order supplies later.
• You aren't tracking the actual inventory quantity in Shopify.

If you want to track inventory in Shopify and let customers buy out of stock items, then you can adjust inventory tracking to oversell. Select Continue selling when out of stock from the Inventory section of a product or variant in your Shopify admin.

Considerations for selling out of stock products

Review the following considerations about overselling when you set up inventory tracking:

• You can select the Continue selling when out of stock option only when you turn on the Inventory tracked setting.
• Continue selling when out of stock doesn't apply to orders placed from Shopify POS. Staff can continue selling products when available inventory reaches zero and below. POS warns staff before they sell an item that's not available.
• If you have more than one active location, then inventory is assigned to a location. Consider the impact of locations on overselling.

Overselling with multiple locations

The inventory quantity at each location and your location fulfillment settings might impact which items are considered out of stock, and which items might oversell.

If you have an item at a location that fulfills online orders with an inventory level of zero or below, and a location with available inventory that doesn't fulfill online orders, then that item is still displayed as out of stock to customers on your online store. You need to add stock to your location that fulfills online orders to allow customers to purchase that product.

When orders are placed through any online sales channel, orders are assigned to a location or locations where they need be fulfilled based on order routing rules and available inventory.