My setup now work as follow;
X-cart does not allow you to check out products that have 0 Qty in stock but I still wanted my customers to be able to buy those products because I can have any product back in stock within 2-3 working days, this way I don't loose a sale! As long as the customer is aware that the item they have bought is on pre-order there is no harm done. To make this all work without touching the original X-cart inventory tracking I have set my Qty in stock on all products to 100 000 so all products will check out and never run out of stock.
To know the amount of products that is actually in stock an extra field was added where you upload new products called Stock indicator.
The stock indicator has got 3 conditions
- If the Qty is 1 or above it will then display next to the product on shop front
In Stock Now
- If the Qty is set to zero it will then display next to the product on shop front
Pre-Order (these are for the products that are currently out of stock but my customers can still buy them)
- If the Qty is set to -1 it will then display on the details page of the product as
Discontinued
*All the discontinued products I set the Xcart inventory tracking to zero Qty to prevent checkout and I set all these products as hidden but available for sale. This third condition was only implemented recently because in the past I use to delete discontinued products but then found out that the search engines still direct customers via those discontinued products to a page that does not exist. I deleted products because I was not educated in this matter and only found out of the negative impact that it has on your site after a year of deleting about 20-30 products daily.
Thanks to the Xcart community for putting me on the right path!
Special thanks to Steve and Amy for your support with the 3rd condition of above and for all the advice and guidance given - Much appreciated!
