Subtract Inventory at ADD TO CART

I sell HIGH DEMAND items in VERY limited quantities. Let's say it's concert tickets

I only have 10 tickets and they sell out within a matter of seconds.....or minutes. I need a way to prevent oversells when more than 10 customers try to buy out 10 tickets. Spending hours refunding customers is NOT practical

I have found THIS EXTENSION:

http://www.opencart.com/index.php?route ... order=DESC

but I'm not sure if that will work for me?? Ideally it would be GREAT if the inventory was reduced as soon as the customer hit ADD TO CART.

Some items I only have ONE and there are 10 or 20 people trying to get that ONE item all at the same time!

Any Ideas?

Any Help? I have money

THANK YOU!!!

~Rachel

Hi Rachel,

The link to the extension doesn't work.

I can see what you are trying to achieve but will it be a bit counter productive at the same time?
Say you have 10 tickets to sell and 10 people add them to your cart but don't actually complete the purchase and leave the page open, that will show no products in stock to other potential buyers who may go elsewhere?

Also, if the product is removed from the inventory, how is it going to be put back in if the purchase isn't completed? Are you going to sit there and manually do it yourself each time it is added to the cart but not purchased? Ho wlong will you wait to do this?

This page might be more useful for what you are trying to achieve:
http://forum.opencart.com/viewtopic.php?t=6800

Using this method means that all 10 tickets are available until they are actually ordered and you have payment details. Saving you a headache but keeping customers relatively happy.

Hope this helps!
Mike

Here is the link to the extension:

http://www.opencart.com/index.php?route ... order=DESC

It checks the quantity available at several points during checkout. It should prevent oversells...I think?!?!?!

Yes, I will also need some kind of timer that holds the item in the persons count for 5 minutes until they complete checkout. If checkout isn't completed it needs to replace the item to inventory.

Possible?

~Rachel

The problem she is experiencing is attributed to the "lag" time it takes for a paypal transaction to complete and return to opencart with a successful transaction status. until that status is seen, no product has been sold yet (the paypal could get denied for example), and on a slow volume site this would not be a problem. But with the products she offers there could be 30 people watching 2 items and all 30 people can add that item to their cart when it becomes available. after that it is a race on paypal checkout to who and how many can get through and return a status complete before the system finally catches on.

I have been told I need to do a few code checks during the paypal process (which is complicated) or just deduct the stock when it is added to cart and have a timer on that session that is set to like 10 min, and if they don't' check out within 10 min it goes back into stock and out of their cart.

I do understand what your saying about missed sales, but this is how a another popular site works and for the moment could work decent.

Does anyone know if the most up to date version of opencart allows the same type of over sale or if paypal integration would remove this problem?

In order to do what you want will be a custom coding job on any version of opencart. Every version works the same. They only remove inventory once an order has been successfully processed.

I currently use Miva Merchant and have been dealing with this same issue. Miva Deducts Inventory when item is added to cart as opposed to when purchase is complete. All other carts I have used in the past deduct inventory when sale is complete. I don't particularly like this system as the majority of customers that place items in their cart do not end up purchasing, when you only have one item left after the first person puts it into their cart its unavailable to everyone else. Miva has a Module for about $26.00 that will "restock" and delete expired carts. You can control how long you want carts to be active in Miva and you can control how often to delete expired carts in the Module. For me this is still a pain because lets say you have it set up to restock every 20 minutes, that means that only one person can have the item in their cart every 20 minutes until it restocks. If only 1 in 10 customerrs finish check out it would take over 3 hours to sell someting that may have sold in 15 minutes had everyone been able to place item in their cart at the same time and only let the first one who checks out get the product. Since I use PPC advertising its a big waste of money to have the product accumilating clicks for 3 hours to sell one pc. If this system works for you though , then Miva might be exactly what you need without need for special custom coding. For me I like it better to deduct inventory only after purchase is complete.

Miva Merchant User

Thought I would bring this back up as I am still interested in this add on.

Would be nice if it was an easy to use module that can others could use.
Basically be able to select in the cart admin panel how the "add to cart" behaves
* 'add to cart' deducts inventory after payment is made (normal)
* 'add to cart' deducts inventory imediatley and starts a restocking timer if user does not check out fast enough.

The restocking timer would be handy for both the purchaser and the buyers who missed out. Both can see how long is left before they either have to pay for their item and how long is left befor that item is restocked if the purchaser decided they did not want the item.

Seems like a great addition and would be easy for someone more knowledgable with the system than I am to implement. Anyone up for making this or making this into the next version of opencart?

Thanks!

jclaudii wrote:Thought I would bring this back up as I am still interested in this add on.

Would be nice if it was an easy to use module that can others could use.
Basically be able to select in the cart admin panel how the "add to cart" behaves
* 'add to cart' deducts inventory after payment is made (normal)
* 'add to cart' deducts inventory imediatley and starts a restocking timer if user does not check out fast enough.

The restocking timer would be handy for both the purchaser and the buyers who missed out. Both can see how long is left before they either have to pay for their item and how long is left befor that item is restocked if the purchaser decided they did not want the item.

Seems like a great addition and would be easy for someone more knowledgable with the system than I am to implement. Anyone up for making this or making this into the next version of opencart?

Thanks!

i agree. This site - very popular in Brazil in other places.. www.privalia.com - works like this.
As the products are sold really fast, and there is a lot of people trying to buy at the same time, and the offer is limited... they solved the problem doing this..

There is a timer 30 minutes, to complete the all checkout process since you add 1 item on it. After that the cart is reseted and product come availble to others. At least, on this way they avoid a lot of problem sales that would be canceled on future cause wouldnt be products for all.

I m looking for this extension too.. i have no demand for it yet, so our team has no calendar to develop it yet, but i m will be around this.. if i have news about a dev work here to this i tell you guys.

By the way thanks!

I am also after a solution to this, any help or advice on how to do this would be appreciated.

Thanks

Me too. I have the same situation products go on sale. buyers go on feeding frenzy for 5 mins then go away for a week until next go around. Add to cart, deplete stock and set expire cart timer would be a great mod. As would time available as well as date available for product!

I am very interested too as we have upload times and our customers rush to purchase

I am looking for a solution to this as well.