Stock/Inventory control

I have a question on stock/inventory control, what would the best way to achieve control would I need to get someone to code the various aspects.

What I want to achieve is that when a customer views a certain item, the buy button is only displayed if the item is in stock, If not in stock a message along the lines of sorry out of stock.

As some of the items in the catalog will be available in small quantities, I need to incorporate a reliable method to prevent overselling. What would be the best way?

Also is it possible to add limits on quantities in the shopping cart on certain items?

Any help would be much appreciated

To accomplish something like inventory control, you will have to add a column in your database to list what the inventory left is.

On the cart page, you can have a show if region for the button and the message. Show the button if there is enough inventory, show the message if there is no inventory left. You will have to use a recordset to get the information on the product so that you can display this.

For the cart, you will also have to do the same thing. Check if the number added to the cart is greater than the inventory left and if it is then show an error message. If not, then show the checkout button.

Make sure that each time an item is sold, the database is updated to reflect the reduction in inventory.

Thank you for your advice Jimmy, I will have a go at trying to implement your suggestion.

What would happen if for example if two or more customers add the same product, when the inventory is checked the product will be available to buy and they wil be allowed proceed to checkout, could this lead to the item being oversold.

It could, but you can also check right before proceeding to the checkout and confirm.

You could also put a lock on items when it gets added to a cart. This would be a time based lock, but you would have to figure out how to implement this on your own.

Thank you for your quick response, I was thinking along the same lines to check at each stage to prevent this from happening.

The payment geteway I am looking to use is worldpay, would the process be the same?

Would coding be required to update the values in the database, to reflect the reduction in inventory.

Yes, you would have to write an update query to change the inventory when the item is sold.

Great, thank you Jimmy for your help.