Setting up behavior for out of stock products

When you track stock in your online store, you can set a rule for how items should appear when their quantity reaches zero. Here’s what you can choose from: 

• Show out-of-stocks on the storefront. The default setting that applies to existing products in your catalog. Customers will be able to see and select products and their variants on the products page, but they won't be able to buy them.
• Hide out-of-stocks from the storefront. Products won’t appear in your store until they are in stock again. If the product has variations, the out-of-stock variations will be grayed out and unselectable. For example, if you're out of blue skirts in size L, shoppers won’t be able to select "L" after choosing the "blue" color.
• Show out-of-stocks on the storefront and allow customers to pre-order them.

You can set the default behavior for all new products on the Settings → Cart & Checkout page. That setting won’t affect your existing products. You can change behavior for existing products on the Products page, either for individual items or in bulk. You can set up a default behavior across online catalog, while setting up behavior for specific products and their variants. 

Changing the default out of stock behaviour for new products

By default, products from your catalog are automatically set to the 'Show on storefront' out of stock behavior. This means that even if an item is out of stock, it will still appear on your website but won't be available for purchase:

To change the default out of stock behavior for new products:

1. From your store admin, go to Settings → Cart & Checkout.
2. In the Default out of stock products behavior dropdown, choose the desired behavior.
3. Save the changes.

That’s it. Now when you create a new product and specify its quantity in stock, it will have the behavior you specified on the Cart & Checkout page. You can change it for individual products and product variations.

Changing the out of stock behaviour for existing products

When you create new products, they will have the out-of-stock behavior that you set up on the Cart & Checkout page. You can change the behavior for all existing products that are already in your catalog.

To change out of stock behavior for products in your online store:

1. From your store admin, go to Catalog → Products.
2. Select one or several products that you want to edit, click Mass Update → Update Stock → Set Out of Stock Behavior and select the rule.
3. Click Change to save changes.

Now selected products will have the behavior that you’ve specified.

You can change the out of stock behavior for all new products that you’ll add to your catalog.

Setting up out of stock behaviour for product variations

Product variations are groups of similar products that are offered in different variations, such as size or color. Examples include shirts that come in different colors and sizes or candles that come in different scents. You can specify the behavior for out of stock variants:

• Show on storefront. The default behavior that will allow customers to select specific variants, but won’t allow to add them to cart and purchase.
• Make inactive on the storefront. Out of stock variants will be grayed out and unselectable. For example, if you're out of blue skirts in size L, shoppers won’t be able to select "L" after choosing the "blue" color.
• Show and allow pre-order. Customers can view and pre-order the product.

To set up the out of stock behaviour for product variations:

1. In your store admin, go to Catalog → Products and select one or several products with variants that you want to update.
2. Click Mass Update → Update Stock → Set Out of Stock Behavior for Variations.
3. Choose the behavior for product variations.
4. Click Save.