Why both in stock AND can be backordered

I agree! This is extremely confusing to customers. People think that the item is NOT in stock but instead is available on back order. This needs to be changed!

Is this something that changed with version 3? I don’t remember seeing it before.

I have actually had customers emailing me asking whether something is actually in stock because they are confused.

If stock management is enabled globally, there’s an option in a product’s variations called Allow backorders?. I would imagine that if this option is set to Do not allow the message should change to display just In stock.

If stock management is enabled globally, there’s an option in a product’s variations called Allow backorders?. I would imagine that if this option is set to Do not allow the message should change to display just In stock.

Yes, but I want to allow backorders when the stock runs out, so allow backorders must be selected. What I’m saying is it makes no sense to show “can be backorder” until the stock is exhausted.

Can I bump this please? We have a number of customers asking what this confusing message means – is there really no option in WooCommerce to change this so that backordering is only mentioned when products are either out of stock or close to being out of stock?

Thanks!

We also had confused customers. I had to edit one of the include files to explain to them what is meant

I have altered the file woocommerce/includes/wc-formatting-functions.php

so that instead of saying “can be backordered” it says “if this item is out of stock it can be backordered” which helps to explain to the customers what is meant. We should not have to go into files and edit the code, especially as the edit has to be done every time there is a upgrade.

I have complained about this issue when first release WC 3.0 came out but they got back to me and told me that this is how it will be in the version 3. It seems that they dont listen people and the latest version 3.12 has the same label (can be backordered).
Who cares if it can be backordered when the item is currently in stock.
I had to hire developer to make it like it was in version 2.6.

Now I got another formatting issue on the order confirmation page. For the item on backorder, it shows label :backordered:” and then it show the quantity on the second line. Before it was:
Backordered: 1

Now it shows:
Backordered:
1

The same formatting glitch in the e-mail order confirmation.

You can create a workaorund by adding your own text instead of the standard messages. just add the following function to your functions.php and replace “YOUR TEXT”. Since I overwrote the strings in the german translation I am not 100% sure if the replace texts are correct written like this. If your text is not replaced with your custom string, check first whether the “original” string is correct.

Be aware that it will only change the texts on the product page, but not on the cart page.

function customCartTexts($availability) {

foreach($availability as $i) {
$availability = str_replace(‘in stock (can be backordered)’, ‘YOUR TEXT’, $availability);

$availability = str_replace(‘available on backorder’, ‘YOUR TEXT’, $availability);

$availability = str_replace(‘out of stock’, ‘YOUR TEXT’, $availability);
}

return $availability;
}

add_filter(‘woocommerce_get_availability’, ‘customCartTexts’);

Thanks, but another workaround is not going to help the fact that the basic core of the software needs to be mended. Nobody should be expected to have to hack the code to make it work properly.

Some settings will show the number in stock. The customer may want more than that number. So if you have 5 in stock and the customer wants 10, he knows he can place his order confident that he will get his 10 when stock comes in.

Play around with this in your functions.php
Use the correct text domain. But I guess woocommerce is correct.

/*** Remove (can be backordered) from Stock status **/
add_filter( ‘gettext’, ‘theme_change_comment_field_names’, 20, 3 );
function theme_change_comment_field_names( $translated_text, $text, $domain ) {

if ( is_singular() ) {
switch ( $translated_text ) {
case ‘(can be backordered)’ :
$translated_text = __( ‘In stock’, ‘woocommerce’ );
break;
}
}
return $translated_text;
}

• This reply was modified 7 years, 5 months ago by alexkappel.

Hey @voodoochill Thank you so much for the simple fix of this annoying problem.

You pointed us exactly where to find the code in the PHP at
woocommerce/includes/wc-formatting-functions.php

We simply removed the words “(can be backordered)”. We can now set all of our products to Allow but notify customer regardless of whether the item is in stock or not.

We changed the line of code FROM: $display .= ‘ ‘ . __( ‘(can be backordered)’, ‘woocommerce’ ); TO: $display .= ‘ ‘ . __( ”, ‘woocommerce’ );

So now if an item is in stock it says: In stock
If the item is not in stock it says: Available on backorder.
Clean and simple.

• This reply was modified 7 years ago by audbennett.

Clean and simple.

Thanks, except that clean and simple would be if Woocommerce actually fixed the problem. But it seems they can’t be bothered.