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When you create your store's payment methods, the advanced settings of the payment method allow you to specify whether orders paid with that method go into the store's New or Unpaid order statuses.
Typically, merchants would use the Unpaid status for offline payment methods like Check or Money order so that the order doesn't mistakenly get processed and shipped while you wait for the funds to arrive and clear.
By default, when an order goes into Unpaid status (and store wide Inventory Control is enabled), the stock for the products in that order are still deducted from your store's inventory. However, merchants have the option of changing this and not removing stock when the order is in Unpaid. Here's how:
- Log into your Shift4Shop Online Store Manager
- Using the left hand navigation menu, go to Settings >General >Store Settings
- Once you're at the Store Settings page, click on the "General" tab found along the top
- Scroll down to the "Inventory Control" near the bottom of the page.
- Place a mark in the "Do not deduct stock for Unpaid Orders" checkbox.
- Finally, click "Save" at the top right of the page.
Note
Any orders in Unpaid status before you toggle the setting would have still deducted inventory since they arrived prior to the setting being activated. Therefore, we suggested processing those orders first and clearing out the Unpaid status before using this setting (to avoid any possible confusion).
After the above steps are complete, the store will no longer deduct inventory from any future orders that go into the Unpaid status. When you move the order from Unpaid Status to New, that is when their respective product stock will be deducted.
Additional Information
Be aware that when using this setting, there is the potential for your inventory going into negative numbers during certain specific situations. For example, let's say you have three units of a product in stock and four separate customer orders come in for that product.
Of the four orders:
- One customer order was paid by check
- This order went to unpaid status
- Inventory was not deducted
- A short while later, three other customer orders came in and were paid with credit card
- These orders went to NEW status
- Inventory was deducted at the time of purchase
At this point, the store's inventory for the product reaches 0. Even though there's 4 orders, one of them went into Unpaid status and inventory was not deducted. So now, when you move the order that's in Unpaid status over to the New status, the store deducts inventory for the product; and brings the stock level to -1.
Therefore, you may want to review your inventory prior to moving the Unpaid orders to New status, just to be safe.
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