A simple product will display one of three options for its stock status, In Stock, Out of Stock, and On Backorder. We can also choose to track quantities, allow backorders, and more.
There are fields in the form which allow the user to configure these from the front end. Click + Add Field and choose the desired option.
Stock Status
This field allows the user to manually set the stock status of the product. The user will be responsible for keeping it updated and stock quantity will not be tracked automatically.
Without this field, all products created by the form will default to be In Stock.
Manage Stock
By adding this field to your form, you enable WooCommerce to auto-manage inventory and automatically update the Stock Status to In Stock, Out of Stock, or On Backorder. In the WooCommerce docs, this is referred to as “stock management at product level”.
When this button is turned on, the Stock Status field will be hidden, and several new fields will be visible, assuming they have been added to the form. These are Stock Quantity, Allow Backorders, and Low Stock Threshold.
When building the form, each of these fields can be added independently, depending on what attributes you would like to be available to the user. However, to use any of these three fields the Manage Stock field must be added to the form and turned on.
Note that the conditional fields are only rendered in the front end of the web page. In the Elementor preview, all fields will be visible.
Stock Quantity
This is the initial stock quantity. As customers make purchases WooCommerce will update this value automatically.
Allow Backorders
This will allow customers to continue placing orders even when the stock quantity has reached zero or below zero.
There are three options:
- Do not allow – when the quantity reaches zero the product status will be Out of Stock and customers will be unable to place new orders.
- Allow, but notify customers – This will allow customers to continue placing orders when the product quantity is zero or below, however, the status shown on the product page will be updated to show “Available on Backorder”.
- Allow – This will allow customers to continue placing orders when the product quantity is zero or below. The product will still appear to be In Stock.
Low Stock Threshold
When the product stock reaches this amount you will be notified by email. The email will be sent to the address specified in the Notification Recipients field in the Inventory Options of the WooCommerce backend. For more information, see the article in the WooCommerce documentation.