Fix orders that show Ready To Ship without stock

Your Sales list may show orders as Ready To Ship even though the stock isn’t on your shelves. When this happens, the products on those orders almost always have Continue selling when out of stock turned on. Qoblex treats a product that can be oversold as always available. It reserves the full ordered quantity for every order, whatever you have on hand, so every order with that product looks ready to go.

This article explains why it happens and how to fix it. You’ll keep overselling on in your Shopify or WooCommerce store, turn it off in Qoblex, and then re-allocate every open order that contains those products. Afterwards, only the orders you can actually ship show Ready To Ship. The rest show Awaiting Stock.

Why your orders show Ready To Ship

When Qoblex allocates an order, it normally reserves only the stock that is available at the location. If there isn’t enough, the line is partly allocated and the order shows Awaiting Stock.

A product with Continue selling when out of stock set to yes skips that check. Qoblex reserves the full ordered quantity even when available stock is zero or below. Every line is fully allocated, so the order shows Ready To Ship. The same applies to a product whose inventory tracking policy is set to not track stock.

This is common for stores that sell before stock arrives (pre-orders or backorders). If your store connection syncs Continue selling when sold out from the store into Qoblex, the store’s setting is copied into Qoblex. So every product you let your store oversell is also set to oversell in Qoblex.

Turning the setting off doesn’t fix orders that are already allocated. Qoblex doesn’t revisit an order’s allocations when a product’s setting changes. It also never takes stock back from overselling products when stock goes down. Those oversold reservations also count against your real stock. Orders that show Awaiting Stock can hold them too, when one of their lines oversells and another is short. You need to release all of those orders and allocate them again, as described below.

Before you start

• Do the steps in the order shown. If you change the product setting before you stop the sync, Qoblex can push the change to your store, or your store can copy its setting back (see Step 1).
• Check whether picking or packing has already started on any Ready To Ship orders. Deallocating changes what stock is available to pick.
• Plan to do Step 3 in one go. Between deallocating and allocating again, your orders hold no stock. Your available stock goes up, and Qoblex sends that number to your store, so the store can take new orders against stock your existing orders need.

Step 1: Stop syncing the overselling setting with your store

The Continue selling when sold out checkbox on your store’s integration settings controls whether this setting syncs between Qoblex and your store. Untick it so your store keeps overselling while Qoblex stops.

The box is only shown when How would you like us to sync your products information? is set to something other than Do not sync. If it is set to Do not sync, the setting isn’t synced either way. Skip to Step 2.

Shopify

1. Open your Shopify integration settings.
2. In the Product Synchronization section, untick Continue selling when sold out.
3. Select Save & Close.

WooCommerce

1. Open your WooCommerce integration settings.
2. In the Product Synchronization section, untick Continue selling when sold out.
3. Select Save.

With the box unticked, Qoblex no longer sends the setting to your store. It also stops copying the setting into Qoblex when your store sends product updates. Your store keeps the overselling setting each product has today, and you can change it in Qoblex freely.

If you have more than one store connected, repeat this for each one. Only Shopify and WooCommerce have this setting.

Step 2: Turn off Continue selling in Qoblex

Set Continue selling when out of stock to off on every product that should only ship from real stock.

1. Open Products and select the products you want to change.
2. Choose Edit products. The Bulk Edit Products grid opens.
3. In the Continue selling when out of stock column, untick the box for each product.
4. Select Save.

The grid edits up to 50 products at a time. If you select more, Qoblex shows “Too many products selected”. For a larger catalog, work in batches of 50 or use Edit by CSV. See Product imports and bulk edit.

To change one product, open it and set Continue selling when out of stock to No, disallow selling when sold out on the product or variant.

Step 3: Deallocate and re-allocate the affected orders

Now release every open order that contains the products you changed, then allocate them again. Include orders that show Awaiting Stock as well as Ready To Ship: both can hold oversold reservations, and any you leave behind keep using up stock the other orders need.

1. Open the Sales list.
2. Filter by stock status: Ready To Ship and Awaiting Stock.
3. Tick every order that contains a product you changed in Step 2.
4. Open Bulk Actions and choose Deallocate. Qoblex shows The selected orders have been deallocated when it finishes. The orders now show Awaiting Stock.
5. Tick the same orders again.
6. Open Bulk Actions and choose Allocate. Qoblex shows The selected orders have been allocated.

The success message doesn’t mean every order is covered. An order Qoblex could only partly allocate still counts as allocated. Check the Stock Status column to see which orders are short. A Bulk Allocate dialog appears only if an order couldn’t be allocated at all.

After allocating:

• Orders fully covered by stock on hand show Ready To Ship.
• Orders that are short show Awaiting Stock. Qoblex allocates them automatically when stock arrives, oldest order first. See When Qoblex allocates stock automatically.

When stock is limited, the orders allocated first take it. If some orders must ship first, deallocate all of the affected orders first. Then select the orders that must ship first and choose Allocate. Then allocate the rest.

Troubleshooting