Magento - Insufficient Stock Notification on Product Page - php

Question

I am using Magento 1.7.0.2. Whilst on the product page, if a customer attempts to add a quantity greater than we have in stock they receive a message stating ".. the requested quantity is not available".
Is there any way for magento to either email or log when this occurs? I.e. I receive an automatic email stating a customer has attempted to add X number of item X? This would allow me to identify lost sales due to us not having enough stock of a particular item?
Has anyone come across anything like this before or is this even possible?
Thank you in advance
Mike Prentice

Answer 1

yes this is possible
You have to code for this.
I came across this problem one time and what i have do like this below.
I have make one observer event to check if customer is requesting quantity more then available if so i sent email to admin.
What you can do is create one observer for chekout_cart_add_before event in this event you can put your logic.
Or otherwise you can use magento feature Backorders you can find this in inventory tab,if you enable this then customer can order even requested quantity > available quantity, customer can see one message in cart page about backorder.

Answer 2

There is no standart functionality to notify about low quantity products by email.
But there is RSS notification http://www.magentocommerce.com/wiki/modules_reference/english/mage_adminhtml/system_config/edit/cataloginventory
Extend this functionality to match your needs.
You could write some script which would parse RSS, and send email etc.
EDIT
Here is some extension you may like http://www.magentocommerce.com/magento-connect/low-stock-email-notification.html
But is is not free.

Answer 3

Here's how I've done it so that it sends a google analytics tracking event whenever a customer tries to order more than the available stock level.
First copy: app/code/core/Mage/CatalogInventory/Model/Stock/Item.php
To: app/code/local/Mage/CatalogInventory/Model/Stock/Item.php
so that you're not modifying a core file.
In app/code/local/Mage/CatalogInventory/Model/Stock/Item.php add this function
public function notifyOutOfStock($productId){
$session = Mage::getSingleton('checkout/session');
//Initialise as empty array, or use existing session data
$outOfStockItems = array();
if ($session->getOutOfStock()){
$outOfStockItems = $session->getOutOfStock();
}
try {
$product = Mage::getModel('catalog/product')->load($productId);
$sku = $product->getSKu();
if($sku){
//Add the current sku to our out of stock items (if not already there)
if(! isset($outOfStockItems[$sku]) ) {
$outOfStockItems[$sku] = 0;
}
}
} catch (Exception $e){
//Log your error
}
Mage::getSingleton('checkout/session')->setOutOfStock($outOfStockItems);
}
In that same file is another function called checkQuoteItemQty.
Inside that function you need to call your new function using $this->notifyOutOfStock($this->getProductId()); right after it sets each of the error messages and before the return statement.
So:
public function checkQuoteItemQty($qty, $summaryQty, $origQty = 0)
{
....
if ($this->getMinSaleQty() && ($qty) < $this->getMinSaleQty()) {
$result->setHasError(true)
->setMessage(
$_helper->__('The minimum quantity allowed for purchase is %s.', $this->getMinSaleQty() * 1)
)
->setQuoteMessage($_helper->__('Some of the products cannot be ordered in requested quantity.'))
->setQuoteMessageIndex('qty');
//** Call to new function **
$this->notifyOutOfStock($this->getProductId());
return $result;
}
.....
->setQuoteMessageIndex('qty');
//** Call to new function **
$this->notifyOutOfStock($this->getProductId());
return $result;
.....
What this does is add your product sku to an array in the checkout session.
This means you will have access to that info in the template file right after your page loads displaying the "Insufficient stock" notification.
So in one of your template files you can add some code to render the necessary JavaScript.
I've chosen header.phtml since it loads on every page. (Users can add quantities of items to the cart in the cart page as well as the product view page).
app/design/frontend/CUSTOMNAME/default/template/page/html/header.phtml
Somewhere down the bottom of the code add this:
<!-- GA tracking for out of stock items -->
<script>
try {
<?php
$session = Mage::getSingleton('checkout/session');
if ($session->getOutOfStock()){
$outOfStockItems = $session->getOutOfStock();
foreach($outOfStockItems as $sku=>$value) {
if($value==0){
//Render the GA tracking code
echo "_gaq.push(['_trackEvent', 'AddToCart', 'ProductQtyNotAvailable', '".$sku."']); \r\n";
//Set it to 1 so we know not to track it again this session
$outOfStockItems[$sku] = 1;
}
}
//Update the main session
Mage::getSingleton('checkout/session')->setOutOfStock($outOfStockItems);
}
?>
}
catch(err) {
//console.log(err.message);
}
</script>
Can confirm this works well and in my opinion is better than an email or RSS feed as you can analyse it along with the rest of your analytics.