Stock control for the Product field

We are thrilled to present a powerful new feature on 123FormBuilder: Stock control for the Product field. This addition is designed to help you easily manage your inventory, ensuring that your customers only order what you have available.

Whether you’re selling products or managing event registrations, this feature ensures accurate tracking and provides a smooth user experience.

How to use Stock control

In the Product field side menu, you will notice a new option in the Payments & Calculations section titled Stock control. Once enabled, you can enter the available stock in the Add stock input field that opens below.

You can return and update your stock at any given time. The values will always add up to the Currently available in stock badge. To remove items from your stock, type the minus symbol followed by the amount you need to subtract from your available stock (e.g. -10).

If you have an item already out of stock but still want to list it for visibility on your form, you can do so easily. Enter “0” in the Add Stock field for that item. This will allow the item to be displayed on your form with an “Out of Stock” badge, informing customers that it’s currently unavailable without allowing them to add it to their cart.

The Stock control feature is available for products with and without the Quantity selector enabled.

How Stock is managed and updated

As users submit their orders and complete the payment, the system automatically updates the available stock. Here’s exactly how this process works:

1. When a customer submits a form, the specified amount of the selected product is immediately subtracted from your available stock. This temporary deduction ensures that the product is not over-ordered while the customer proceeds with the payment.

2. After the form is submitted, the customer is redirected to the payment processor to complete the transaction. However, the stock deduction is only finalized if the payment is successfully completed:

• Successful payment: If the payment is completed, the stock remains deducted, reflecting the accurate inventory available for future customers.
  
• Failed payment: If the payment has not been completed, the system automatically returns the initially deducted quantity to the available stock.

Handling out-of-stock items

Stock levels are checked each time an item is added to the cart, and then once again when the form is submitted. Therefore, even if an item was initially in stock when the customer started their order, it might go out of stock by the time they try to submit the form.

If this happens, the customer will receive an error in the Order summary to notify them of the change. They won’t be able to adjust the quantity and will need to remove the product from their order so they can successfully submit the form.

In other cases, customers might add a quantity that exceeds the available stock. In this situation, the Order summary will display an error message informing the customer that the available stock is lower than the desired quantity. Your customers won’t be able to submit the form until they update the quantity.

If a customer accesses the form and an item is already out of stock, they will see an Out of Stock badge on that item. The quantity box (if enabled) and the Add to Cart button are also removed, thus preventing the customer from attempting to order the unavailable product.

Stock control and other form features

Save for later

The Save for later feature allows your form respondents to save their progress on a form and return to complete it at a later time. It’s important to note that when customers use the Save for later option after adding items to their cart, the selected quantities will not be subtracted from your available stock.

This is because stock levels are only adjusted once a form is fully submitted and payment is completed. Until then, the items remain in the customer’s cart without affecting your inventory.

If the items selected go out of stock in the meantime, your customers will receive in the Order summary one of the errors mentioned above.

Edit delivered submissions

One feature that is not compatible with Stock control and Payments is the option to Allow respondents to edit delivered submissions at a later time from the Advanced -> Submissions tab. This is because it can lead to discrepancies and potential conflicts between the customer and the business owner.

When a submission is edited after being finalized, it could involve changing the quantity of items ordered, adding new items, or removing others. Since stock levels are adjusted at the time of the original submission and after the payment has already been made, any future changes made through this feature will not automatically update the inventory. This could result in inaccurate stock levels, leading to issues such as overselling or not having sufficient stock to fulfill other orders.

To maintain the integrity of your inventory and avoid misunderstandings, we recommend carefully considering whether to enable the Edit delivered submissions feature when Stock control is in use.

Stock control and form Submissions

If you edit a submission from the Results → Submissions section and you need to change the quantity ordered, please be aware that any changes made – such as increasing or decreasing the quantity – will not automatically update your available stock. The same goes for deleting a submission.

This means that if the quantity ordered is altered or a submission is removed, the product’s stock level won’t be adjusted by the system. To ensure that your inventory remains accurate, you’ll need to manually update the stock quantity for that item accordingly.

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