- First of all, you will see that a lot of fields in the Inventory tab have been defaulted to the configuration settings. This means that, by default, Magento will use the settings you made as the default value for these fields.
If it is more convenient for you to change the defaults, go to System | Configuration | CATALOG | Inventory. Since we did not discuss these default settings in Chapter 2, General Configuration, we'll do it here. Just remember that if you're changing the fields below very often, it might be easier to change the defaults for your situation.
To be able to change the contents of the fields on the item level, first deselect the Use Config Settings checkbox and then change the value of your field of choice.
- The Manage Stock field is pretty clear: do you want to keep track of stock levels for this product, Yes or No? If you set it to No, a lot of other fields will disappear, because they are no longer relevant in that case. The Inventory tab looks like the following screenshot:
- If managing stock levels, you must enter a starting stock value in the Qty field.
Remember that this value is in the unit of measure you're selling your products in. As an example, if you have 900 pairs of socks in stock, but sell them only in packages of three pairs, you would enter 300 here.
- The Qty for Item's Status to Become Out of Stock field is a minimum value that you can use to have some control levels in your stock. By default this is set to zero, assuming that you can sell every single piece you have available.
- Minimum Qty Allowed in Shopping Cart is clear: if there's a minimum number of products your customer should buy, enter it here. Please note that this is on the product level, it has nothing to do with a minimum order value.
- Maximum Qty Allowed in Shopping Cart will block any customer from buying more items in one order than the value in this field.
- Qty Uses Decimals will be needed if, for instance, you're selling something by weight or length. Do you allow the customer to buy 5.5 meters of loudspeaker cable? If yes, set this value to Yes.
- The Can be Divided into Multiple Boxes for Shipping field is a new field in Magento 1.7 and can be used for more complex shipping solutions, where it is important to know how to handle the product at shipping. You may leave the default for now.
- The Backorders field is important to set the behavior of Magento when you're running out of stock. You may decide to not accept backorders, accept backorders, or accept backorders including a notification to the customer that the products are actually no longer in stock.
- The Notify for Quantity Below field holds the threshold value for the aforementioned field. A customer will only be notified if the stock value drops below the value of this field.
- The Enable Qty Increments field is used in special circumstances. Set it to Yes if you're, for instance, selling wine in boxes of six. If you set this field to Yes, another field will appear, which you can use to set Quantity Increments:
By setting this to
6, for example, Magento will let your visitors know that they have to buy six or a multiple-of-six items. Trying to order something else will fail and Magento will warn the visitor, explaining that they must order the correct quantity.Note that if you're selling in boxes of six, and you have six boxes on stock, the Qty field should still be set to 36 if you are using this functionality. Of course, we'll not use this function for our TV example, but there are a lot of products where this function comes in handy.
- Don't forget to set the last field, Stock availability, to In Stock, otherwise your product might not be visible in the frontend of your store! As soon as you're running out of stock, Magento will automatically change the value of this field. So, remember that whenever you're adding a new stock in Magento in the Qty field, you must also check if the Stock Availability field has the correct value. Just changing the Qty field isn't enough.
If you have already set up your categories before starting to add products, this is an easy step. Just assign the correct categories to your products. It's possible to select multiple categories. If you do not select any category at all, your product will not be visible for visitors through the regular site navigation.