Back-Order
Enabling Back-Order on a product will allow your customers to purchase this product when it's out of stock.

Setting On The Product
You can specify an individual product to be available for backorder by clicking
"Allow customers to purchase this product when it's out of stock"
This will give you a drop down with the following options:
- Yes - tell customers this product is on back-order
- Yes - do not tell customers this product is on back-order
- No - do not let this product be purchased when out of stock
What is the Default Link?
The default link will let you reset this value to whatever is defined in your Global Product Settings (See below)
Global Setting
Instead of setting this value on each individual product, you can specify a "Global Setting".
Navigate to: Products>Settings: Inventory Settings - Backorders
Here you will see the same options as above. Setting the option here will set it for all products in your catalog (unless otherwise specified individually).
Troubleshooting: Products do not show back order enabled
If your products are set to allow backorder but they show out of stock on the front-end, this may be because the value for database field "is_in_stock" is set to "0" (false) or use_config_manage_stock is set to 1.
The reason this field would be set to zero is because if the quantity for a product reaches 0 while the backorder functionality is not enabled, the field will not properly be kept at the value of "1" (true).
To resolve this you need to import a CSV file with the three columns listed in the table below
Column | Value |
---|---|
sku | The product SKU |
is_in_stock | 1 |
use_config_manage_stock | 0 |
When your file is ready for importing you can go to
- Advanced->Import/Export
- Products Import
- Select your file
- Import Type: Append Complex Data
Then run the import. This will iterate over every row in your CSV file and set the value of is_in_stock to 1 thereby resolving the issue.Make sure to reindex & refresh your store after the import
Updated over 1 year ago