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Reference Guide

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You can find the updated Miva 10 Reference Guide here

Catalog

Inventory

Miva Merchant has a set of features that help you do inventory management, and the Catalog > Inventory tab is a part of it. For an overview of how inventory management works in Miva Merchant, please see: Inventory Management.

In general, you can use the Catalog > Inventory tab to:

Inventory Settings

Track Inventory:

Check this box to enable the basic system for inventory tracking in your store. You must also enable inventory tracking at the product level.

Remove Products from Available Inventory:

This feature is sometimes called "Inventory at Checkout". See To Use the Remove Products from Available Inventory Feature.

Before release 9.0006, Miva Merchant always reduced your inventory when a customer added something to their basket. For example, if you are using inventory management and you had 100 vases, Miva Merchant would automatically reduce your inventory to 99 when a customer put a vase in their basket.

In 9.0006, you can choose whether you want your inventory to drop when a customer adds a product to their basket, or when the customer completes checkout and reaches the invoice screen.

Let's say you have 5 vases in stock. Ten customers are visiting your store and each wants to buy a vase.

If you set this field to "When Added to Basket", only 5 people can add a vase to their basket. The sixth customer sees an out of stock message on the product page.

When you set this field to "At Checkout", all 10 customers can add a vase to their basket, even though you only have 5 in stock. The products can be purchased by whoever goes through checkout and reaches the Invoice screen first. The 6th customer will see an out of stock message when they get to checkout.

Both settings have pros and cons:

  • When Added to Basket
    • Pro: If a customer adds an item to their basket, it is absolutely available to be purchased.
    • Con: If all of your inventory is in baskets, it looks like you are out of stock, even if those products haven't been purchased.
  • At Checkout
    • Pro: If you have a high rate of abandoned baskets, the products in those baskets can be purchased by other customers without waiting for the baskets to expire.
    • Con: Customers may add an item to their basket thinking that it's in stock, but by the time they get to checkout, the inventory has already been purchased by other customers.
When Inventory is Unavailable at Checkout:

If you set the Remove Products from Available Inventory field to "At Checkout", it's possible that a customer will have an item in their basket, and find out that it's out of stock when they go to checkout. See above for more details.

If that happens, the customer will be redirected to a page and will see an error message. You can use this field to control which page the customer is redirected to. The default page is Basket Contents (BASK).

Track Low Stock Level: Low Stock Level:

Tracking low stock has several effects:

  • You can set up automatic emails so that you are notified when inventory reaches your low stock level.
  • You can use the low stock level to create a kind of "reserve" for your inventory, if you want to make sure that you always have a few items on hand. For example, let's say you have quantity 5 of an item on hand, and you set the low stock level to 3. If you use the default "In Stock Message (Long)": %inv_instock% available for immediate delivery customers will see the message:
  • In Stock Images

    Because the %inv_instock% token is calculated as: current stock - low stock level

Track Out of Stock Level: Hide Out of Stock Products: Out of Stock Level:

Tracking out of stock has several effects:

  • You can set up automatic emails so that you are notified when inventory reaches your out of stock level.
  • You can use the out of stock level to create a kind of "reserve" for your inventory, if you want to make sure that you always have a few items on hand. For example, let's say you have quantity 5 of an item on hand, and you set the out of stock level to 3. When your inventory level reaches quantity 3 on an item, customers will see the out of stock message. If you have "Hide Out of Stock Products" enabled, the product will not be displayed in your on-line store.
In Stock Message (Short) In Stock Message (Long) Low Stock Message (Short) Low Stock Message (Long) Out of Stock Message (Short) Out of Stock Message (Long) Limited Stock Message See Inventory Messages.
Available Tokens The list of tokens that you can use in your store inventory messages.

To Use the Remove Products from Available Inventory Feature

  1. Enable inventory tracking at the store level.

    1.1. Go to Menu > Catalog > Inventory tab > Inventory Settings section.

    1.2. In the Inventory tab, click the Track Inventory checkbox.

  2. Enable inventory tracking at the product level.

    See:

    To Enable Inventory Tracking for Products with No Attributes

    To Enable Inventory Tracking for Products with Attributes

  3. Set inventory for your product.

    For products with no attributes, see:

    Menu> Catalog > edit product > Inventory tab > Increase Stock By field.

    For products that have attributes, see:

    Menu> Catalog > edit product > Inventory Variants tab > Edit Inventory button.

  4. Choose when you want your inventory to be reduced.

    4.1. Go to > Catalog > Inventory tab > Inventory Settings section.

    4.2. Set the Remove Products from Available Inventory field:

    • When Added to Basket
    • At Checkout

    4.3. Click Update.

Email Notification

Use the Email Notification tab to send automated emails to your employees when inventory on any item is low or out of stock. To use email notification you must:

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