How to Prevent Overselling Out of Stock Items in WordPress

Efficient inventory management is super important for any eCommerce business. Overselling out of stock items can lead to unhappy customers, increased refund requests, and a damaged reputation.

But managing inventory can be tricky, and how you do it depends on your eCommerce tools.

The good news is we’ve used all the most popular eCommerce plugins, including WooCommerce, Easy Digital Downloads, and WP Simple Pay.

In this article, we’ll show you how to easily prevent overselling out of stock items in WordPress, using all 3 of these tools.

That way, you can streamline your operations and preserve customer trust. Let’s get to it!

Why Prevent Customers From Buying Out of Stock Items in WordPress?

If you have an online store, then overselling out of stock items can lead to customer disappointment and complicate order fulfillment.

For example, if you sell clothes and a customer places an order for a shirt that isn’t available, then you may have to manually adjust orders, track down a replacement, or contact the customer about product substitutions.

This can damage your brand reputation heavily, and users may even leave negative customer reviews on your WordPress site.

By improving your inventory management, you can ensure that you always have the items customers want and can inform them if they go out of stock. Doing this will boost your sales, reduce complaints, and enhance your store’s credibility.

Having said that, let’s see how to easily prevent overselling out of stock items in WordPress with WooCommerce, Easy Digital Downloads, and WP Simple Pay.

You can use the links below to jump to the method of your choice:

Prevent Overselling Out of Stock Items in WooCommerce

If you have a WooCommerce store, then this method is for you.

First, we will look at the global settings. These control your notifications and automate product status changes.

You can start by visiting the WooCommerce » Settings page and switching to the ‘Products’ tab. Then, click on the ‘Inventory’ link.

Here, you must check the ‘Enable stock management’ option.

After that, scroll down to the ‘Notifications’ section. You should check the ‘Enable low stock notifications’ and ‘Enable out of stock notifications’ options.

You will now get an email when a product runs low. Enter the email address for these alerts in the ‘Notification recipient(s)’ field.

Next, you can set your global thresholds. The ‘Low stock threshold’ triggers the email alert. The ‘Out of stock threshold’ will automatically change the product status to ‘Out of Stock’ when it hits zero.

We also recommend checking the ‘Hide out of stock items from the catalog’ option. This stops users from seeing items they can’t buy.

Then, you can also configure the ‘Stock display format’ option from the dropdown menu.

For instance, you can select the option to show your users the stock quantity of each product.

You can choose the ‘Only show quantity remaining in stock when low’ option if you want the users to know when only 2 items for that product are left in the inventory. This option can create a sense of urgency among visitors and may encourage them to buy your products.

However, if you don’t want to display stock quantity at all, then you can pick the ‘Never show quantity remaining in stock’ option.

Finally, click the ‘Save changes’ button to store your settings.

Setting Stock Limits for Individual Products

Now that global notifications are on, you must set the actual stock quantity for each product. The global settings do not know how many shirts or caps you have on the shelf.

Go to Products » All Products and click ‘Edit’ on an item.

This will open a new screen, where you must scroll down to the ‘Product Data’ section and switch to the ‘Inventory’ tab.

Next, check the box next to the ‘Stock Management’ option.

This will open some new settings, and you can start by adding the quantity for the product you are editing. Now, enter your current stock in the ‘Quantity’ field. For example, if you have 10 blue hoodies, type 10.

Next, pay close attention to the ‘Allow backorders?’ setting.

If you strictly want to prevent overselling because you cannot source more items, select ‘Do not allow’. If you plan to restock soon, you can allow backorders, but keep in mind this technically counts as overselling.

After that, you can add a low stock threshold for the product. If you don’t configure this setting, then the storewide low stock threshold that you configured earlier will be applied for the individual product.

Finally, click the ‘Update’ button at the top to store your settings. You have now successfully prevented overselling out of stock products in WooCommerce.

Prevent Overselling Out of Stock Items in Easy Digital Downloads

If you sell items via Easy Digital Downloads, then this method is for you. It is the best WordPress plugin for selling digital products like music, eBooks, spreadsheets, software, and more.

We’ve been using it for years to sell our software and plugins, and we’ve had great results. For more information about our experience, you can see our EDD review.

Usually, vendors do not need to create a purchase limit for digital files. However, if you are selling items on your website, such as tickets to an event with a specific limit or an expiration date, then you will have to prevent overselling sold-out tickets.

You can easily do this using the plugin’s Purchase Limit extension.

First, you will need to install and activate the Easy Digital Downloads plugin. For detailed instructions, see our step-by-step guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.

Upon activation, head to the Downloads » Settings page from the WordPress admin sidebar and enter your license key.

You can find this information in your account on the Easy Digital Downloads website.

Next, you must set up your store and add digital products. For detailed instructions, you can see our beginner’s guide on how to sell digital downloads in WordPress.

Once you have done that, visit the Downloads » Extensions page from the WordPress dashboard.

Here, you must locate the ‘Purchase Limit’ extension and click the ‘Install’ button under it.

After that, go to the Downloads menu tab from the admin dashboard. Here, you will see a list of all the digital downloads you created for your site.

Simply click the ‘Edit’ link under the product where you want to set a purchase limit.

This will open the block editor, where you must scroll down to the ‘Download Details’ section.

Here, you can type the number of tickets or copies of the digital product that you are selling under the ‘Purchase Limit’ option.

For instance, if you have 10 tickets to sell for an event, you can enter 10 in the field. When your store sells all 10 tickets, your purchase button text will automatically change to ‘Sold Out’.

This way, you won’t be able to oversell out-of-stock products to customers.

If you have added multiple price options for your digital product, you can also set different purchase limits for each package.

For example, if you have 10 standard tickets and 5 VIP tickets to sell for an event, you can set different purchase limits for them.

You can also check the ‘Disable product when any item sells out’ option. This feature is only available if you have multiple pricing plans for a product.

This means that your product will be removed from the catalog once it sells out.

Finally, go back to the top of the page and click the ‘Update’ or Publish’ button to store your settings.

You have now successfully prevented overselling your out of stock digital product.

If you want to set a default purchase limit for all the digital products on your website, then you can do that by visiting the Downloads » Settings page and switching to the ‘Misc’ tab.

Next, click on ‘File Downloads’ to open more settings on the page.

From here, set a default limit for all your products by typing a value next to the ‘File Download Limit’ option.

This will be the maximum number of times each file can be purchased and downloaded from your site. Once that limit is reached, the product status will then automatically change to ‘Sold Out’.

Once you are done, don’t forget to click the ‘Save Changes’ button to store your settings.

Prevent Overselling Out of Stock Items in WP Simple Pay

If you use WP Simple Pay on your website, then this method is for you.

WP Simple Pay is the best WordPress Stripe plugin on the market that makes it super easy to add a payment form to your website.

During testing, we found that it has an intuitive builder, complete spam protection, and numerous premade templates for subscription services and workshops like cooking lessons, dance classes, coding, and more.

This makes it an ideal choice if you have a membership site or if you host workshops. To learn more about the tool, take a look at our WP Simple Pay review.

You may have a limited number of subscriptions to offer or a limited number of openings for your class, and do not want to oversell your services or subscriptions. In that case, you can easily avoid overselling using WP Simple Pay’s purchase restrictions feature.

First, you need to install and activate the WP Simple Pay plugin. For detailed instructions, see our step-by-step guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.

Upon activation, a setup wizard will be launched on the screen where you must click the ‘Let’s Get Started’ button.

You will be guided to the first step, where you must add your license key and click the ‘Activate and Continue’ button.

You can find this information in your account on the WP Simple Pay website.

Next, you have to connect your Stripe account with the plugin.

To do this, click the ‘Connect with Stripe’ button.

After that, you must log in to your Stripe account to connect it with WP Simple Pay. Once you do that, you must configure the other setup wizard steps.

For more information, see our tutorial on how to create WordPress forms with a payment option.

Next, visit the WP Simple Pay » Add New page from the WordPress admin sidebar. This will take you to the ‘Select a template’ page, where you can click the ‘Use Template’ under any template.

For this tutorial, we will be creating a simple payment form.

This will launch the form builder, where you can start by adding a title and description for your form.

After that, you can select ‘On-site payment form’ as the type and then switch to the ‘Payment’ tab.

Here, you can scroll down to the ‘Price Options’ section and add an amount for your product or service.

You can also add multiple price options by clicking on the ‘Add Price’ button.

Then, you can scroll down to the ‘Payment Methods’ section and check the box next to the payment method you want to add to your site.

You can add AliPay, Klarna, AfterPay, and any other methods that you like.

Once you have done that, you can switch to the ‘Form Fields’ tab to add, rearrange, or delete fields in the form according to your liking.

For more detailed instructions, see our tutorial on how to accept payments with Stripe in WordPress.

Next, switch to the ‘Purchase Restrictions’ tab and check the ‘Hide the payment form after a set number of payments’ option.

If you have a single price, simply type the total limit into the ‘All payments count towards a single limit’ field.

For example, if you have 15 spots in a dance class, type 15. The form will hide itself after 15 successful payments.

However, if you have different price options (like General Admission vs. VIP), select ‘Each price option has its own limit’

Next, you can switch to the ‘Payment Page’ tab and check the ‘Enable a dedicated payment page’ option.

You can now create a custom page for your payment form by adding a permalink, color scheme, image, and footer text. Once you are done, don’t forget to click the ‘Publish’ button to store your settings.

You have now successfully prevented overselling your membership subscriptions or classes with WP Simple Pay.

Bonus: Inventory Management Tips for Your Online Store

Apart from preventing overselling out of stock products, here are some other inventory management tips that can help boost traffic to your online store and lead to more conversions.

For instance, you should regularly count your physical inventory to avoid any discrepancies between your online store record and actual products. You can also categorize your products based on popularity, value, and lead time for better management.

You must also analyze your store’s past sales trends to predict future demand and adjust your inventory levels accordingly. MonsterInsights, the best analytics solution on the market, makes this easy.

The plugin can display an overview report for metrics such as total sales, revenue, average order value, and conversion rate. You can easily adjust the reports to analyze older data by setting a custom date range.

For more details, see our guide on how to properly set up eCommerce tracking in WordPress.

Additionally, you should keep an eye on industry trends and competitor activity to predict any changes in demand for your product.

You can do this with Google Trends. For more information, see our tutorial on how to use Google Trends to improve SEO and grow your business.

Some other tips for better inventory management include adding discount offers for less popular items and organizing your inventory according to product type.

Using all these tips will help you get ahead of your competitors and ultimately get more sales.

Frequently Asked Questions About Overselling Out of Stock Items in WordPress

Here are some questions that are frequently asked by our readers about overselling out of stock items in WordPress:

What happens if multiple users try to purchase the same item at once?

This is a common concern for high-traffic stores. Here is how the plugins handle it:

• WooCommerce: You can enable the ‘Hold Stock’ feature in settings. This reserves the item in a user’s cart for a set time (like 10 minutes) so others can’t buy it while they check out.
• Easy Digital Downloads: Since digital files are usually unlimited, this is rarely an issue. However, the Purchase Limit extension updates instantly once a payment completes.
• WP Simple Pay: The Pro version checks the limit before processing the charge. If you are using the free version, you will need to monitor sales manually and take the form down when you reach your limit.

Adding real-time purchase restrictions or holds helps prevent overselling in situations where several customers act quickly.

Can I set a purchase limit per customer?

Yes, you can set a purchase limit per customer, and it’s a smart way to manage limited stock.

• WooCommerce offers several plugins, like Min/Max Quantity, to set per-product or per-user limits.
• In EDD, you can use the EDD Purchase Limit extension to cap how many times a product can be bought per customer.
• With WP Simple Pay, you’ll need to add conditional logic via Stripe metadata or create purchase limits with a custom integration.

This helps ensure more customers get access and avoids one person buying everything.

How do I handle out-of-stock products gracefully?

When stock runs out, you want to keep customers informed and interested.

• In WooCommerce, you can disable backorders or use a Waitlist plugin so users get notified when items are back in stock.
• EDD allows you to set download limits. When the limit is reached, the product becomes unavailable. Use a Waitlist, Coming Soon, or Back in Stock notice to let users know when to check back.
• With WP Simple Pay, create a custom form message or redirect users to a “Sold Out” page once your quantity threshold is met.

Always communicate stock limits clearly to avoid confusion and build trust.

We hope this article helped you learn how to prevent overselling out of stock items in WordPress. You may also want to see our beginner’s guide on how to increase WooCommerce sales and our list of impressive eCommerce statistics you won’t believe.

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