There is an improvement that could be made to the function that sends out of stock emails. How it currently works is that if there is ANY manual change to the stock amount it will send an email to everyone on the Stock Notification list for that item. It would be nice if it was programmed to only send the stock notification if the stock is set to a positive number. There are instances when we are reconciling our inventory that we want to just throw a negative number in there just to make sure that there aren't any unauthorized orders that can check out. Even if the number is 0 and you change it to a -5 (in the online interface), it will send out emails.

The workaround that we do - and is a bit tedious - is to go into the database and find the option and update the stock to a negative number. This does not seem to initiate the stock notification emails. Then, if we are dumping old unauthorized orders, it will add that inventory back in, but as long as you put a high enough negative number it will still remain in the negative and will not accidentally make it available for someone to purchase.

If there was a condition that could be added to that function that only sent out stock notification emails when the stock number was modified to a positive number, that would be helpful when managing items that are low stock.

Hi Chris
This sounds quite reasonable to only send the stock email when stock is positive so I had a look at the code and it really does seem to be the case that emails are only sent when stock goes positive. Can you let me know how you are using this function? For instance, is it from the admin products page, and is the stock set by the product or by the option? And anything else you can think of.

Vince

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I think in the most recent instance the stock was being set by the prod options. There is a size option and when I went to set the stock in the option to a negative number, the line item for that stock notification on that specific option disappeared. I suppose I am not 100% sure that the email was sent in this case, I am drawing that conclusion that when that option was cleared from the stock notifications list that it did, in fact, send the email. I just performed a test on an item that is being controlled on the product level. It did seem to allow a negative entry that did not initiate the emails, so I guess that means it is happening only when the stock is being handled on the option level.

Hi Chris
I see what is happening. The system sends out the stock reminder for product options when any of the options go back into stock. So when you set your option negative the stock is checked, and because one of the other options will have stock it's assumed this has come back into stock and the email is sent. The reason this is done is because it may be that the customer asked for a stock notification on say a blue version of a product, but they may well be happy with a green version.

Vince

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I see what you are saying, but there are many times where the options are actually different and where the option does matter. An example would be where the option is used to select a design or more commonly a size. It would be nice to have more control in a way where people are not getting emails that the size medium came back in stock when it hasn't. A size option is probably the most common example where that doesn't work well to send an email because a customer is looking for a specific size. Thanks!