Hiya Bren,

One of the main things that inventory control does help with is making sure your one of a kind items, if you have any, are not sold over and over without you having them in stock. This is a great thing because once it is sold that's when it will put the Sold Out thing on the site so others can't keep buying it. Very helpful little feature there for that situation and of course if your getting low on an item so it's not oversold and you don't have unhappy customers that purchased something and now can't get it.

Hiya Jo,

Correct me if I'm wrong here guys as I have just used it myself and it doesn't say what it's actually doing, and the name changed from what it was in beta a while back soo....

What I'm pretty sure it is is a sync button that will download the current inventory amounts on your website. Something that is probably a good idea to do before uploading to keep your shop inventory sync online and offline. I don't know if it's something you "have" to do to keep it synced, guess we could ask that question too.

As for it not connecting there's a few reasons that would happen. First would be if you don't have it setup correctly. In your settings you have to turn the inventory control feature on. Another would be if you are uploading your files manually instead of through the program and if you are unable to connect and upload in the program. It's necessary for the inventory control to work that you upload using the program rather than manually with ftp, the last I heard this was how it is that is. And another reason would be if your shop isn't named correctly which would most likely affect upload of the shop also. And the last reason that I'm aware of is that you need to have the PayPal system setup correctly with the token key etc. for this to work and cannot be using a landing page for return after purchasing. I'm sure there are other reasons too.

I'm not on my pc that has the pro Cart Creator on it, but without it sounding sarcastic has anyone read the docs on the inventory control? Seeing has how it took months to get them written, I am assuming that they should be quite comprehensive?

The Sold Out feature is part of the inventory management. It cannot be manually implemented.

I put the help files on my iPad and they have been a great help me. I can read a couple of pages and fall right to sleep. Just kidding about putting me to sleep.

I read the inventory section as I setup the store and the CoffeeCup crew did two updates because of my chronic-old-man-complaining-syndrome.

All I can see that the inventory button does is sinks with your local files. Which don't work on mine because I am on a windows server. It only removes the sale from inventory on Linux servers.

Thanks Scott. Will definitely put it on the "to do" list. I'm hoping I can add items with 0 stock and they will be included on the site as 'sold out', and that I don't need to have one and sell it for it to be displayed. I must admit I haven't read up on inventory as it's a feature I thought that I wouldn't need to use. Thanks!

Hiya Bren,
I'm pretty sure that will work, I think I saw Scott or someone say something to someone a few days ago about that being something you can do with the putting 0 in the amount to show it as sold out.

Thanks Jo Ann. Great news.

OK SO FIRST "YES I keep referring back to the manual to try to find an answer first"

Now, perhaps I didn't phrase it correctly, YES, I had an idea of what the Inventory icon is supposed to do, but it wasn't doing it, thus my post.

Yes, inventory control feature is turned on, tracking and logging. Was able to get into the transaction log no problem.
Yes, I am loading all files through the program using the Publish button. And everything seems to be loading up just fine. I check my site after every publish just to make sure.

Yes, my shop is named correctly (otherwise none of the upload and tracking would work, right?)

Yes, my paypal system is set up with token key and landing page php file in place (per the instructions in the manual;)

I CAN DO STUPID sometimes, so I appreciate the details on possible problems or things I might have missed!!

Thanks. I have been reading them and they are a great help.! It wouldnt matter that I work on a PC with Microsoft Windows, yet my server is a Linux would it? I had to call GoDaddy when I couldnt get the site to load and they suggested either upgrading my windows server (yeah something something) or changing to a Linux server (recommended) so I went with the Linux.

Hiya Jo,

Just another update on the issue with the Inventory button. I found that mine didn't connect either, and I have an issue with the little popup boxes that tell you what's going on keep going behind the program so I didn't even see it till I minimized the program to find a file on my desktop. I then realized I had 2 different addresses in the setup of the shop between the Inventory area and the server area lol. Soo... needless to say there is another reason it may not work. Fixed that and uploaded, but.... found another reason that the message would pop up.

If you don't have your site uploaded yet and are uploading for the first time, that message will popup saying it cannot update the inventory thing. Kind of misleading as it makes it look like something is wrong, and in fact tells you that there is something wrong. It took me a few minutes to realize it couldn't sync with a shop that doesn't exist online yet so I just went ahead and uploaded it anyways and now it syncs fine.

Maybe that message should also contain info saying 'it may also be caused if you have never uploaded your shop yet and this is the first time so there is no shop there to sync with yet'?