Using the WooCommerce Amazon Fulfillment plugin and ended up selling products that were out of stock in Amazon FBA? You may have missed this critical step in the setup which isn’t currently mentioned in the WooCommerce Amazon Fulfillment documentation. Not to worry, here’s what you need to do to prevent selling products on your WooCommerce store that are out of stock in Amazon FBA.
The WooCommerce Amazon Fulfillment plugin documentation takes you as far as setting up the inventory control settings under the WooCommerce > Settings > Integration > Fulfillment by Amazon tab.
That’s all well and good – and the documentation makes you feel like you’re all set.
But YOU’RE NOT.
YOU NEED to go to each product page and tick the “Manage Stock?” check box – see the screenshot below
If you do NOT tick this box the WooCommerce Amazon Fulfillment Plugin will dutifully synchronise stock levels on your WooCommerce site with Amazon FBA – but it won’t do a single thing in preventing customers from buying products that are out of stock.
The good news is, you can bulk edit this setting on the WooCommerce Products using the bulk edit option – see screenshot below:
Once you’ve done this all of your inventory is likely to show up as “out of stock” – which in itself is scary and make you instantly think that something is wrong with WooCommerce.
It’s not. Trust me.
You now need to go BACK to the WooCommerce > Settings > Integration > WooCommerce Amazon Fulfillment panel and “Manually Sync Local Levels” by clicking the “Click to sync ALL Local Levels of Stock to match FBA” see screenshot below
This will then pull all of your stock levels into WooCommerce from Amazon FBA.
How is this part of the setup NOT in the setup documentation for the WooCommerce Amazon Fulfilment Plugin?
I have no idea.
But it’s insane.
The functionality is there – ready and waiting to be enabled, but unless you tick this box, the WooCommerce Amazon Fulfilment Plugin for WooCommerce won’t update the stock status to out of stock for products that are out of stock in Amazon FBA.
This might be something you discover MONTHS down the line when all of a sudden you’re getting orders for products that have just gone out of stock – so it’s not necessarily something you’d pick up on right away during testing – that’s a pretty damn dangerous issue, especially when launching sites for clients.
Recap;
How to prevent selling products on WooCommerce that are out of stock in Amazon FBA
If you’re using the WooCommerce Amazon Fulfillment Plugin for WooCommerce to synchronise your Amazon FBA Stock with your WooCommerce store, you need to follow the instructions in their documentation but then ALSO make sure you go to each individual product in your inventory and enable “Manage Stock”.
This will then allow the WooCommerce Amazon Fulfillment Plugin to change the stock status to “Out Of Stock” when stock at FBA hits the limits you’ve specified in the overall settings for the plugin.
Such a minor fix for something that can cause such major headaches and issues.
If you’re looking for WooCommerce Help and Support you can keep browsing Future State Media – but we’ve also put together a list of the best WooCommerce Forums, WooCommerce Facebook Groups and WooCommerce Support Resources for you to get peer to peer support. Check out the WooCommerce Support Resources List here.
If you’re not familiar with WooCommerce Amazon Fulilment, you should checkout this overview of this essential WoCommerce FBA Plugin
