In stock on backend, out of stock on FB…

Hi @tamar,

Thanks for reaching out. Happy to help you with this!

This can be the case if your products are set to an inventory value of “0” in your Facebook catalog.

The Facebook for WooCommerce plugin does not sync inventory counts from your WooCommerce store and is supposed to default to an inventory count of “100”, leaving the stock status up to whether the product is “In stock” in your WooCommerce store, or “Out of stock” and should disregard the inventory count.

Unfortunately, on occasion products are set to an inventory count of “0” on import and are then shown as “Out of stock”. Would you please take a look at one of your products in your Facebook catalog and see if the inventory count is set to “0”?

Thanks,
Marcus

• This reply was modified 4 years, 5 months ago by Marcus, SkyVerge Support. Reason: typo

Looks like you’re right, thanks Marcus.

I made some changes on the backend now (WooCommerce needed to be updated also). I synced but I’m still getting the error that there’s an issue:

“The availability of this product is ‘in stock’ but its inventory is equal to 0. This is contradictory, please fix this in your data source.”

So I can’t sync this data at all? How we ensure there are no issues when doing fulfillment if the inventory doesn’t sync?

Hey @tamar,

Thank you for taking a look at this for me. There are a couple of ways that we can try to remedy this, but neither is particularly ideal. Before we look at either of them, I’d like to confirm that this will fix the issue.

Would you please edit one of the products in your catalog and set the inventory count to 100 and see if that solves the issue? How many products do you have in your store total?

Thanks,
Marcus

Only two and I did that and synced them and am still getting that error I pasted above.

Hey @tamar,

Thank you for taking the time to give that a try and for keeping me updated. When you updated the inventory count, did you do that in the site or at Facebook? We’ll want to change the inventory count in the Facebook catalog.

Would you also please share a couple of screenshots (you can use snipboard.io to share links): one of your product admin listing page and one of your Facebook catalog product page?

Thanks,
Marcus

I did it on WooCommerce. Not FB. Why doesn’t it sync? That can be a massive issue with inaccurate data and orders that can’t be fulfilled.

Hi @tamar,

Thank you for letting me know. You are correct that it would be ideal for the inventory to sync to Facebook. In fact, we have that on the roadmap to include and hopefully that will soon be the case!

The good news here is that your site is where customers ultimately make their purchase. While it is possible for your product to show as being “in stock” on Facebook when it really isn’t, the customer would ultimately be directed to purchase on your WooCommerce store, where they would not be able to. In this way, it is not possible to sell a product that is truly out of stock, no matter what the status shows on Facebook.

Did you get a chance to update the stock levels on the Facebook side and see if your products are shown as “in stock”? Let me know!

Thanks,
Marcus

I did and it works now.

But how would they know that the item is out of stock if the inventory numbers aren’t syncing?

Hi @tamar,

That’s great news! Thank you for confirming this for me.

While the actual inventory numbers aren’t currently synced, an “in stock” or “out of stock” status is shared during the sync process. This currently lets the Facebook shop know whether an item is simply available or not.

Are there any other questions I can answer for you? Please don’t hesitate to let me know.

Thanks,
Marcus

Got it. Thanks for this. Works for me.

That’s great, @tamar! Thank you for confirming this for me. ??

I’m going to go ahead and mark this as resolved, but please feel free to reach back out if you have any other questions!

Cheers,
Marcus