An effective store operation is quite a demanding job. It covers many tasks on various levels that require close attention. Yet, inventory is perhaps the most important thing you have to consider.
It’s crucial to have a clear picture of the products you sell and monitor their flow. Fortunately, you can always refer to Magento inventory management tools and use the extensive set of options it offers.
So, you've landed on the right page. Today, you'll learn more about inventory management for Magento and find useful tips that help to enhance your efforts.
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General Inventory Configuration
For starters, it's essential to look into the stock configuration. Not only do these options help you to manage the inventory internally, but also improve the customer experience.
By using the "In Stock" and "Out of Stock" labels you establish indirect communication with your customers. You save them from the unnecessary hassle when the item turns out to be unavailable right before they're ready to purchase.
Thus, to apply the general stock settings navigate to Stores > Configuration > Catalog > Inventory and set up each section accordingly.
Stock Options
The settings you add in the Stock Options section are applied to your entire catalogue. Here you can specify if the stock status is visible on the storefront in the first place.
Besides you can set the general behaviour of the statuses, and determine whether the out-of-stock products are displayed for customers.
Product Stock Options
Together with the Stock Options, you can configure the Product Stock Options for separate items.
There are numerous possibilities at your disposal to manage stock more effectively. For example, you can set the minimum quantity of items in the shopping cart and even make it more specific by adding different settings for different customer groups.
Depending on your sales strategy you might need to enable quantity increments, the out-of-stock threshold, or some other options from this section. Tweak the settings just the way you need.
Advanced Magento Inventory Management
After the global stock settings, you can go even further and configure the advanced inventory. This allows you to apply the extended inventory settings for each product in your catalogue individually, giving you more flexibility.
To access the config, go to Catalog > Products, choose the item you want to set up the advanced inventory for and press the Advanced Inventory button under the Quantity field. Then, you can go on and fill out the corresponding fields to adjust your needs.
What's important, you can either exclude or include stock management here. So you'll have to configure the short or long form respectively.
Multi-Source Inventory
If your store has a complex structure and you operate more than one inventory source, you might need a different approach. The relevant solution was released in Magento 2.3.0 in the form of the multi-source inventory.
The Magento 2 MSI is an improved tool that allows you to manage multiple sources, organize them into stocks, as well as assign different qty of products to sources. Then there is the salable quantity that gives you a better perspective of the inventory that's still available for purchase.
Thus, if your business requires such a solution, the multi-source inventory can greatly assist in your Magento 2 inventory management.
Magento 2 Inventory Management Tips
In the process of managing your inventory, you should also pay attention to customers and their experience. The options we've just described are what you can start with. However, to increase customer engagement in your store and convert them into active shoppers you should follow a few tips.
Let's take a look at the options you have.
Configure Back-in-Stock Notifications
One of the features you can use is the back-in-stock notifications. You configure these product alerts in the backend and then the corresponding message is displayed on the product page of the out-of-stock item.
So, your customers can subscribe to the notification and get updated as soon as a corresponding product is back in stock. It's a great solution to increase loyalty since your customers can still buy your product instead of looking for similar items elsewhere.
Enable Backorders
Magento 2 backorders may turn out to be even more effective. While the back-in-stock notifications only update customers on the availability of the product, backorders allow them to place orders for items that are currently out of stock.
Correspondingly, the back-ordered products are shipped as soon as they are restocked.
Depending on the result you want to achieve, you can enable backorders either for the entire catalogue, that is globally, or for specific items only.
Set Up Low Stock Notifications
To avoid the out-of-stock situations altogether, you can configure the low-stock notifications. These email notifications are sent to the admins when the quantity of products reaches a specified threshold.
You can send notifications based on the quantity or the salable quantity. Either way, you receive valuable insights into the product stock to restock on time.
Effective Magento 2 inventory management is key to successful order processing and improved customer experience. And since Magento provides multiple stock options you should make the most of them to fulfill your business needs.
