This page lets you specify the stock quantity on each item, which decreases in real time as orders take place.  When it reaches the warning level, warning messages will be attached to the the bottom of order confirmation emails. When it drops below the minimum level, the item will be marked as "Sold Out" and cannot be ordered. Note that you can set negative minimum quantity to allow "back ordered".

To display the real-time stock status in your shopping page, insert the following script (around the shopping Item):

<script src="view_stock.asp?ProductID=myproduct"></script>

where myproduct is the product reference code. Be sure to qualify "view_stock.asp" with the appropriate domain and path. By default, stock levels are identified by "In Stock", "Low Stock", "Back Ordered", and "Sold Out". The wording can be changed or replaced by images by editing view_stock.asp directly.

Two special products: "-qty-" and "-amount-" can be used to display a quick summary of the shopping cart. Namely you can insert the following two lines on your shopping pages to display the information (e.g. cf. the sample page),

<script src="view_stock.asp?ProductID=-qty-"></script>
<script src="view_stock.asp?ProductID=-amount-"></script>

The primary function of this page is to list the stock items under monitoring and to provide an editing facility to change them. Items not listed will not be monitored and will always return  "Available" as their status.  

Product Start :  The starting reference for the items to be listed.

End:  The ending reference of the listing range.

List:  Click on this button to refresh the list with the new conditions (or criteria).

Include Items:  Check/uncheck the type of items to be listed.

In Stock: Any item with the stock quantity above or equal to the warning level.

Low Stock: Any item with the stock quantity below the warning level but above zero and above or equal to the minimum level.

Back Ordered: Any item with the stock quantity below zero (and below the warning level) but above or equal to the minimum level.

Sold Out: Any item with the stock quantity dropping below the minimum level.

Batch Mode:  Click to jump to the bottom of the page where batch operation buttons reside.

Select All: Click to select all the items listed (presumably for deleting).

Add:  The first row in the list lets you enter a new item to the list. Simply fill in the boxes and click on the Add button.

Details:  Click on the "Details" link next to the Check box on each row to edit the details of the product.

Export Data:  (Batch operation) export the selected items into a CSV-formatted file. Please set the file extension to .txt or .csv when prompted for the file name.

Microsoft Excel may launch itself within the browser to display the data, which however, does not handle the CSV format by default. Follow the steps to correct the problem:

• Click on the "A" column to highlight the entire column.
• From Window's Menu, click Data -> Text to Columns -> "Delimited" -> "Comma" -> Finish.
• Then File -> Save As -> Select "CSV (Comma delimited)(*.CSV)" as the "Save as type".

MS Excel might also display a Shop Manager Login page. This is a bug in MS Office 2000. Upgrade it with the latest service packs from Microsoft.

Update items:  (Batch operation) update the changes made to the selected items to the database.

Delete items:  (Batch operation) delete the selected items from the database. Proceed with extreme certainty.

Clear All:  (Batch operation) Delete the entire stock level table from the underlying database. Proceed with extreme certainty.

Import from File: You can export the data to a text file to you local computer, edit them, then put back to the system by importing the data from the file. User the Browse button to select the file and click on the Import from File button to upload to the system. 

Note: Don't forget to tick on the items you want to update or delete (on the right-most column). If you are updating a large number of records it is recommended that you do this on a back-end process via non-browser based method such as direct operation on the database (e.g using an attached table from another database). There are known bugs in IIS for file-uploading through browsers (which hangs the server). For this reason, we do not provide such an operation.

The default page size (100 items) and the maximum number records (5000) are set on the top of the underlying page (shop_stock.asp)