One of ChannelGrabber's core features is stock management, ie. the system can feed out stock updates to all connected sales channels whenever you make a sale or update a stock quantity manually in CG.
But what if you don't want the real stock level to be shown on the sales channel(s)?
Perhaps you are a new seller and have listing limitations on eBay so cannot list all the stock you have available?
Maybe you make items to order so want the listings to stay permanently live with stock available to buy?
Or what if you just want to create a sense of urgency with the potential customer by showing fewer available items to encourage them to buy your product right away?
Well, we have the answer! :) our advanced Stock Modes, also sometimes referred to as "pseudo stock".
Stock Modes Explained
We have three different options that you can implement in CG:
List All
If you simply want the real Available stock level from CG's Products page to be sent to your sales channels.
List up to a Maximum of
Allows you to set a capped stock level for your products. For example, you may have 20 of an item available, but you only want your prospective buyers on your sales channel(s) to think you have 3 left. You would set this stock mode as the default for the sales channel and product(s) you want it to apply to. Then, if your real stock level is above 3, CG will limit the stock on the sales channel to 3.
If the item is ordered, we immediately push the maximum stock level back out to the listing again. Only when your real stock level goes below the maximum level will CG send out the real stock level, so that you don't oversell when you only have a few left in stock. If you add more stock in CG, we put the level back up to 3 again on the sales channel for you.
Fix the Level at
Allows you to set a permanent, fixed stock quantity, effectively meaning that even if you have none left, the item will remain available for sale. Obviously this is a managed approach to allowing you to over-sell, so do use it carefully.
Setting the Default Stock Mode for ALL products
If you want to apply a blanket rule on which stock mode and quantity is applied to ALL SKUs in your Products page in ChannelGrabber, navigate to Settings > Product Management > Stock and select the desired Default Stock Mode:
Then set the default Max / Fixed Amount (quantity) and hit the Save button:
Setting the Default Stock Mode per Sales Channel
First navigate to Settings > Product Management > Stock and scroll down to the section with the header "Enable / disable "List up to a maximum of" or "Fix the level at" rules by account". You will find a table with each of your connected sales channels and a toggle to enable or disable each stock mode per channel:
Decide which sales channels you want any stock modes applied in CG to be sent out to by switching the relevant toggle to ON:
If stock management is already switched on in ChannelGrabber, this will immediately trigger the system to push your newly applied stock modes out to the appropriate sales channels. If your stock management is not switched on yet, check out our guide on how to prepare for and Turn on Stock Management.
Setting the Stock Mode per Individual Product/SKU
As well as the "blanket" Default Stock Mode settings above, you can also set and adjust the Stock Mode and Level per individual item/SKU, so that different products and variations can have their stock managed differently.
Navigate to the main Products page and click onto the Stock tab:
In the Stock Mode column you will see a drop-down box, showing the current Stock Mode that is applied to the product, and next to it, the current quantity for this stock mode:
When you click on this drop-down box for any SKU, it will show four options. The first option at the top of the list of modes is whatever you have set as the default stock mode/quantity in your Stock settings as per the instructions above in this guide. In this example, the Default is set to "List Up To: 3" which you can tell by looking at it as the number 3 is "greyed out", showing that it is a default stock level and cannot be directly edited from this page (it must be edited in the Settings as above to change the Default):
Second in the drop-down list is List All - if this is selected, then CG will feed out whatever the real stock level is in the Available field for this product in CG:
Third in the drop-down list is List Up To - is this is selected, you can then override whatever the default stock mode/quantity is, with your own manual entry for this specific SKU, so if your default Stock Mode is "List Up To: 3" but you want this specific product to "List Up To: 10" you can select this option then amend the quantity for it, then click the tick button to apply this change:
Fourth in the drop-down list is Fixed At - if this is selected, you can then override whatever the default stock mode/quantity is, with your own manual entry for this specific SKU, so if you want this specific product to have a permanent fixed stock level of "5" so that you can continue selling the item even if you have no available stock, you can select this option and enter 5 as the quantity, then click the tick button to apply this change::
If stock management is already switched on in ChannelGrabber, this will immediately trigger the system to push your newly applied stock modes/levels out to the appropriate sales channels. If your stock management is not switched on yet, check out our guide on how prepare for and Turn on Stock Management.
Uploading Stock Modes per SKU in Bulk
As yet it is not possible to upload Stock Modes and Quantities in bulk directly through the CG interface, however, it is something that we will be releasing in the near future. Keep an eye out for updates from us for when we release this feature!