Stock management is essential in business. It helps you keep track of your stock in real-time, prevent excess stock and product shortages, reduce human effort, and ultimately improve your business. Managing stock, however, can be very tricky and complicated without proper tools. Instead of reducing cost and possibly maximizing your overall sales, you risk falling short and eventually losing more.
At Jotform, we continually improve our Form Builder. Previously, Stock management was done with widgets, which meant you had to set up the product items outside our Product List field or Payment Integrations. But the wait is over. Stock management within our Form Builder is now possible.
How do you enable stock control? Let’s start!
Note
Stock management is available when you are Selling Products and not when you are Selling a Subscription.
Enabling Stock Control
- Edit the product where you want to enable its stock control.
- Go to the Stock tab.
- Toggle Enable Stock Control to Yes.
Setting up the Stock Control Options
When enabled, you have two options, as shown above:
- Available Stock
- Enable Low Stock Alert
The Available Stock box is the total quantity of products in your inventory. You have to set the quantity to the actual number of stock for the product. If you put zero in this box, you will see a Sold Out badge in the product item, which means you have sold out of the product. The product item is also disabled, and your customers can’t select it on the form.
When you toggle the Enable Low Stock Alert to Yes, you must input a value greater than zero to the Low Stock Value box.
The system checks the available quantity from the Low Stock Value box. If the Available Stock is equal to or below this field’s value, Jotform will send a low stock alert email to your primary email address.
Jotform will only send the above email once. Clicking the Update Your Stock button will open the Form Builder.
Jotform, on the other hand, sends out the Out Of Stock email to your primary email if you sold out your product.
Clicking Update Your Stock will also open the Form Builder. Even if you toggle the Enable Low Stock Alert to No, the system will still send you the above Out of Stock email.
Setting up Stock on Product Items with Options
For products with Options, enabling the stock control will display the Available Stock panel for all Options. In the below example, we have the Colors as the Options.
The Quantity column of the items from the added Options is zero by default. That means you have sold out the Option, and leaving it empty means you have an unlimited stock for the Option. You must enter the available quantity for each item if you wish to control their stock.
Notes
- Adding a new Product Option will reset the Available Stock boxes of all existing Options to zero. You will then need to redefine the available quantity for each Option.
- Adding a new item to an existing product option will keep all available stocks, but you must enter a quantity for this new item. Keeping the Available Stock for the new item means you have it sold out.
Stock Control Badges
When the Stock Control is enabled, the Form Builder will display the following badges to let you know if your product stock needs checking.
- Sold Out – This badge is displayed if all product options have a zero stock amount.
- Check Stock – This badge is displayed if your product item has Options and if one of the Options has a zero stock amount.
- Low Stock – This badge is displayed if you toggle the Enable Low Stock Alert to Yes, and if the Low Stock Value is equal to or less than the Available Stock value.
If you have hundreds of products on your form, these badges will make it easier to manage stock.
Related Guides:
More About Managing Stocks
- The form automatically reduces the number of Available Stock based on the quantity of the product or product options sold. For example, your initial stock is 30. If you sold five, the form would reduce the available stock to 25.
- The Quantity option will only display a range based on the available stock. For example, you have ten as the available quantity. If you sold five, you would only see up to five in the Quantity dropdown.
- The form constantly checks the stock values of all products based on a user’s action, such as if they select or deselect a product. This state informs your customers if the Option is still available. For example, you have this Color as the Option, and one of the Colors has run out of stock. Your users will get the following error in the form if they try to submit the form.
- If a product is sold out to another customer while previewing the form, selecting the product will automatically display the Just Sold Out badge. The product is then disabled when you refresh the form or deselect it.
Notes
When you use the Authorization Only feature, the form will only reduce the stock of the product after each successful submission. If you do not complete the transaction using Jotform’s “Charge Customer Now” button/link or gateway’s Complete Transaction functionality, you will need to increase the available quantity manually.
The payment gateways listed below complete the transaction on their side and return the transaction result to Jotform. The transaction result is either Successful or Failed. The form will only reduce the Stock Quantity of the product when Jotform receives a successful transaction result. Therefore, there may be rare cases (if multiple transactions start at similar times and the payment gateway returns payment information with a latency) where stock quantities decrease below zero for off-form payments.
- PayPal Business (For alternative payment methods)
- Mollie (For alternative payment methods and credit card payments with 3D secure)
- PayPal Personal
- PayPal Invoicing
- PayU
- PayU Money
- PayU Turkey
- Worldpay UK
- GoCardless
- Sofort
- 2checkout
- Skrill
- ClickBank
- Onebip
- Paymentwall
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10 Comments:
317 days ago
Hi there! Very informative. Thanks. However, stock control of all the products will be so much easier to control and manage the stock
More than a year ago
Enabling and managing product stock in payment fields can vary depending on the specific payment gateway and e-commerce platform being used. However, in general, there are a few steps you can follow to enable and manage product stock:
Check if your payment gateway supports product stock management: Not all payment gateways offer this feature, so you'll want to check with your specific gateway to see if it's available.
Set up your products: Make sure each product in your e-commerce platform is set up with a unique SKU (stock-keeping unit) that can be tracked. You can also set a stock quantity for each product, which will be used to track how many units are available.
Enable stock management: In your e-commerce platform's settings, look for an option to enable stock management or inventory tracking. This will typically allow you to set a threshold for when a product is considered "out of stock" and cannot be sold.
Manage stock levels: Keep track of how many units of each product are sold and update the stock levels accordingly. This can usually be done manually or automatically through your e-commerce platform.
Set up notifications: To avoid overselling products or running out of stock, set up notifications to alert you when stock levels fall below a certain threshold.
More than a year ago
An importable form link at the end would have topped this off! but very well written.
More than a year ago
Re stock control, is there anyway of running a report off of all products and their quantity of available stock to assist with stock checks?
Thanks
More than a year ago
No hay forma de alimentar stock desde un archivo ya sea txy o hija de cálculo. La integración con Google sheet está muy bien y también debería permitir leer stock desde un archivo donde yo como usuario solo puedo actualizar ese archivo y no tocar el formulario.
More than a year ago
Is there a way to automatically replenish stocks on a daily basis automatically within the system?
More than a year ago
Hola!
en que opción de pago está incluida la opción de Stock?
Sería válida para introducir como producto un número determinado de habitaciones y así vender las habitaciones que tengo reservadas?
Gracias!!
More than a year ago
Hi, My question is, if I was already selling a product for a while, and now I decide that I want to enable a stock limit of "200", does that mean the form will allow 200 more products to be sold from this point in time, or will it consider how many I have already sold of that item and restrict the combined total (past + future) to 200? I cannot figure out the answer to this question from reading the documentation. Thank you.
More than a year ago
When you select a product and that product is sold out during you preview the form, “Just Sold Out” badge is displayed. The form user should deselect that product intentionally. After deselecting the product, the badge turns to “Sold Out” and the product is disabled.
ay/
More than a year ago
Ok. I've got a weird question. I am using a jotform to sell bagels. I produce 80 bagels a week--that is my inventory that I need to track. For each of the bagels there are 7 topping options.
For the bagel item I have enabled the product options which are the seven potential toppings. Now if I enable quantity--then my customers can only order set quantity of the same product option (four plain, four sesame, etc)--but I can track the total stock. If I select the "select sub products from options" toggle, my customers can select individual amounts for the options, but the stock is now tracked by the topping and not the bagel itself (i.e. I cannot limit the total number of bagels, only the toppings).
Is there a way to enable the "select sub products from options" (to allow my customers to select various iterations of bagels and toppings) yet still track the stock on the total inventory of bagels--to sell out when the system hits 80 bagels?