Managing inventory

It is important to keep your inventory accurate and track the quantity of each product in your store. Accurate inventory allows you to avoid selling more products than you actually have and helps remind you to replenish your stock before you run out.

You can specify stock quantity for every product in your Ecwid store, and Ecwid will automatically reduce it once a product is bought. Once the quantity of a certain product reaches zero, this product will receive a Sold Out label and become unavailable for purchase. You can also choose to receive an email notification when a product quantity gets low, so you have time to restock.

Enabling stock tracking for products

When you add new products to your store, they have an unlimited quantity by default. To enable stock tracking for a product, you should specify how many units of this product you have in stock.

When customers place orders for a product (and the order payment status is either Awaiting Payment or Paid), the product’s stock gets automatically reduced by the number of units ordered. Once that product’s stock reaches zero, it is labeled as “Out of stock” in your store admin and as “Out of stock”/“Sold Out” in your store and can’t be added to the cart. Learn more about the basics of inventory tracking in Ecwid →

To set quantity in stock for a product:

You can also track the stock levels of a product by its options like color and size (example: a Yellow XL). To track a product’s stock by size, color, etc., you will need to create variations for your available product options and specify the SKU and stock quantity for each variation. Learn more about managing stock of product options →

Setting up low-stock alerts

To know when it’s time to replenish a product’s stock, you can opt into receiving an automated message from Ecwid informing you that a product’s stock has reached a certain limit.

Simply enter the low stock value at which you would like to receive a notification, and the store will automatically send you an email when your product reaches this limit.

To specify the low stock level for a product at which you want to be notified:

The low stock notifications will be sent to the email address that you specified in Settings → Notifications, in the Admin email addresses block. You can specify another email there or add several email addresses (e.g., yours and an email address of a person who manages your inventory). Please note that this address is used for all your admin notifications, and not only for the “Low stock” notification.

When you receive a low stock notice in your inbox, you can click the Re-stock product button to quickly reach that product’s editing page and update the stock quantity once it has been replenished:

To stop receiving emails about low product stock, you can disable the Low stock notification in your Ecwid admin, in the Settings → Notifications page (this setting affects all products). To remove low stock notifications for just a certain product, go to that product’s page, select the stock control block, and set a zero value in the “Send me a note when the quantity in stock reaches” section. This way, the notification will be sent only when the product becomes out of stock in your store.

Displaying stock status and quantity on the storefront

On product pages in your Ecwid store, you can display the “in stock” status, products’ actual in-stock quantity, and a special field that allows customers to enter how many units of an item will be placed in the cart after pressing the “Add to Bag” button.

Displaying the "In stock" label and product quantity

By default, the “In stock” label is displayed for all the products in your store: for the ones with unlimited stock and for the ones with enabled stock control. If you’re using stock control, your product pages can also show information about the current numbers in stock.

You can hide this information from the product pages if you want (for example, if you sell services).

To show/hide the “In stock” label and quantity:

1. From your Ecwid admin, go to Design.
2. Scroll down to Sidebar and find the "Add to Bag" button section:
   

   

3. Check or uncheck the box next to Stock availability labels (and next to Number of items in stock if you also wish to show/hide that information).

Displaying a quantity field on product pages

If your customers tend to order many units of the same product, or you offer quantity discounts, you can add a quantity box to your product pages. The quantity field is available for products with limited as well as for products with unlimited stock.

To show/hide the quantity field:

1. From your Ecwid admin, go to Design.
2. Scroll down to the Sidebar section.
3. Find the “Add to Bag” button menu.
4. Check or uncheck the box next to Product quantity:
   

   

Hiding out-of-stock products

If you’re using stock control, Ecwid marks products with zero quantity as “Out of stock”/“Sold Out” in your store and hides the “Buy Now” and “Add to Bag” buttons for these products so that they can’t be ordered:

You can choose whether to display or hide out-of-stock products in your storefront. To hide out of stock products from customers, enable the corresponding option in your Ecwid admin, in the Settings → General → Cart & Checkout page:

Understanding stock changes in your store

If you are using stock control, the stock for products is changed according to the following rules:

• If a customer adds products to cart in your online store and checks out, then the stock is reduced by the number of products ordered. A customer cannot order a product if its quantity has already reached “0”.
  
  When an order for a product (or a product variation) is placed in your store, that order's payment status becomes either Awaiting Payment or Paid. If later you change the payment status for an order to Cancelled or Refunded, the quantity of the products from that order will be automatically returned to their stock. For example, if you have 8 units of a product in stock and then cancel an existing order for 2 units, you will have 10 units in stock.
  
  
  If you issue a refund in PayPal, Stripe, or PagSeguro, your store will automatically know about it and will set the Refunded status for the respective order in your Ecwid admin.
  Note that if you mark an order as Partially refunded, the stock of the purchased products in your store will not change.
• If you create an order on behalf of a customer, product stock is always reduced.
  If your manual order includes a product that is already out-of-stock or its quantity in stock is lower than the quantity in the order, the product stock will become negative. For example, product quantity was equal to “1” and you manually placed an order for 3 units of it, as the result the product stock will be equal to “-2”.
• If you place an order for a product from an abandoned cart, its stock will be reduced.
  If the order features a product that has become out-of-stock in your store by the moment you place the order for an abandoned cart, or if the quantity in stock is lower than the quantity in the order, the stock will become negative. In this case, you will see a special “Oversold by” notice when placing an order.

Please note that if you edit the product quantity for the orders that already exist, the change won't affect the in-stock quantity for these items in your store. You will need to take care of the stock changes yourself (e.g., update the stock manually or provide additional items, if needed).

Updating product stock levels in bulk

You can always update the stock of individual products on their pages in Catalog → Products. In case you want to update the stock of your products (or their variations) in bulk, you can use the following options:

• You can quickly update the stock of products and/or their variations using the Bulk Product Editor tool.
  With Bulk Product Editor you can also set when the low-stock notifications are sent or set the product stock to Unlimited.
• You can use the built-in import tool to update the stock quantity of products/product variations. For this, you can create a simple CSV file with any text editor, add two data types in it — SKU and quantity, — and import this file to your store. Please note that product variations need to have their own SKUs in your store so that their properties like quantity in stock can be updated via import (in this case, they are treated as individual products).
  For example, you want to update the stock quantity of the variation Black Shoes Size 6 to 55 items and the stock of the variation Red Shoes Size 5 to 79 items. In this case, create a file with the SKU and Quantity columns:
  

  

  Save it as .csv and import to your store via your Ecwid admin panel (Catalog → Products → Import Products button). Learn more about how to import files →
  As a result, the stock of these variations will be updated in your store:
  

  

Viewing your inventory

You can use several options to view current stock of products and product variations in your store:

• First, you can always check the stock of a product on its page in Catalog → Products (in the Options → Variations tab, if the product has variations).
• Second, you can control the stock of your products and product variations using Bulk Product Editor. As the Bulk Product Editor allows you to view multiple products and their stock all at once, you can also use this page to check inventory. Just choose the products you need (or select all the items in your store) for editing in Catalog → Products, enter the Bulk Product Editor and scroll the table down to see whether you need to refill the stock:
  

  

You can also use the Out of Stock filter on the Catalog → Products page in your Ecwid admin to get the list of out-of-stock products. This filter displays all the products that are currently out of stock:

FAQ

I’m using the Sell on the Go app and use stock control. Sometimes (e.g., at a fair) I need to quickly sell products that have already become out of stock in my store. Can I do it?

Yes, you can. Ecwid knows that sometimes it’s really important to take an order on time. We believe that you have the most up-to-date information about your stock and whether you can refill it in the near future. If you sell a product that is out of stock via the Sell on the Go app, you will still see an “Overselling by 1” note for this product.

How can I manage inventory in one place if I sell across different channels?

If you sell across multiple channels, you can manage all inventory in one place with the help of the Orderhive app. Orderhive syncs your inventory through each of your channels and unifies inventory and order data in one single back-end. The integrated barcode functionality helps you scan, save and search for SKUs (products) across your warehouses.

Orderhive is a paid app with a free trial available.