Keep every paid order when stock runs out

Your sleep stack sold out at 2 a.m. while an ad was still running. Three buyers paid in the last minute, and the store refused their orders after the card was charged, so support spent the morning on refunds and angry emails.

The enemy is a stock count that cancels a sale someone already paid for.

A paid order now always goes through. Stock comes off every sale, every renewal and every order from your other merchants (ClickBank, Digistore24, JVZoo, BuyGoods, Cartpanda, Shopify, Shop Pay, Explodely and postbacks) when its lines match one of your products, and it can drop below zero. An order that took more than you had on a Stop selling product is marked Oversold. Your team gets a notification for each one and an email at most once a day, and Conversions has an Oversold tab so you can restock, ship late or refund on your terms. Before the card is charged, checkout tells the buyer when a Stop selling product is already at zero, for the main product, bumps, upsells, PayPal and Klarna.

Refunds no longer put units back on their own, because most refunded buyers keep the goods. Turn on Restock on refund for products that do come back. A bundle can list the products it ships, and each sale then takes those products times the quantity sold.

Know the limits. Bundle components are counted after the charge, so a sold-out component flags the order instead of stopping checkout. Continue selling products go below zero without an Oversold mark.

Try it: open Settings, Products, pick a product, open the Fulfillment tab and scroll to Inventory.