Handling product inventory
Inventory is set and managed in your ecommerce platform directly, but you will need to determine how Recharge interacts with your store's inventory settings. This guide provides an overview of Recharge's inventory settings and instructions for handling out-of-stock orders.
Recharge Checkout on Shopify
Inventory behavior settings
Inventory setting |
Inventory behavior |
| Create order always (do not check for inventory, and do not reduce inventory) | Recharge will always create a subscription order and ignore the settings in Shopify. |
| Create order always (and reduce inventory) | Recharge will always create the subscription order, even if there is no available product inventory set in Shopify. For example, if the inventory is set to 0 and a customer orders 10 pieces of inventory, the inventory would be reflected as -10 in Shopify. |
| Create order only if inventory is available (and reduce inventory) | Recharge only creates the subscription order if there is available inventory in Shopify. If the inventory is not available, the order is marked with an inventory error. |
Adjust your inventory settings
- Click Settings and select Order Processing from the merchant portal.
- Under Order Processing, select the desired inventory behavior for recurring orders.
- Click Save.
Auto-renew product inventory
When syncing products in Recharge, the duplicate auto-renew products adopt the inventory levels of your original products. However, Recharge does not use the inventory levels set on duplicate auto-renew products. You will only need to adjust the inventory of the original product.
Shopify Checkout Integration
Inventory behavior settings
Inventory setting |
Inventory behavior |
| Create order always (and reduce inventory) | Recharge will always create the subscription order, even if there is no available product inventory set in Shopify. For example, if the inventory is set to 0 and a customer orders 10 pieces of inventory, the inventory would be reflected as -10 in Shopify. |
| Create order only if inventory is available (and reduce inventory) | Recharge only creates the subscription order if there is available inventory in Shopify. If the inventory is not available, the order is marked with an inventory error. |
Adjust your inventory settings
By default, Recharge will not check for inventory of one-time products added to a subscription order. To have this setting enabled on your store, reach out to support or your account manager.
To adjust your inventory settings:
- Click Settings and select Order processing from your merchant portal.
- Under Order Processing, select the desired inventory behavior for recurring orders.
- Click Save
Recharge Checkout on BigCommerce
Recharge only creates the subscription order if there is available inventory in BigCommerce. If the inventory is not available, the order is marked with an inventory charge error.
BigCommcerce Checkout Integration
Note: This section is applicable to merchants using the BigCommerce Checkout Integration. Refer to the Shopify Checkout Integration, Recharge Checkout on Shopify, or the Recharge Checkout on BigCommerce sections for other platforms.
For initial orders, BigCommerce monitors and applies inventory settings in the native checkout.
For recurring orders, Recharge creates the subscription order only if there is available inventory in BigCommerce. If the inventory is not available, the order is marked with an inventory charge error.
Out-of-stock orders
If the order contains any out-of-stock items then the order is marked with an inventory error and retried automatically based on your dunning schedule. To view orders with inventory errors, click on the Orders page in the Recharge merchant portal, and view the Charge errors tab.
Note: Making changes to an out-of-stock order will not automatically retry the order. Recharge can automatically retry the order based on your store settings during the next six-day interval, however, you can also manually retry the order.
To manually retry the charge once the item is back in stock, click the three dots next to the order in the Errors tab and select Retry charge.
Out-of-stock notifications
You can set up automated email alerts to notify customers when their order is out of stock.
- Click Settings and select Notifications from your merchant portal.
- Click the Out-of-stock email under Customer notifications.
- Under Status, click the toggle to enable the notification.
See Notifications for more information on setting up notifications.
Partial order fulfillment
Note: This section is applicable to merchants using the Recharge Checkout on Shopify, Recharge Checkout on BigCommerce, or the BigCommerce Checkout Integration.
Partial order fulfillment improves out-of-stock inventory handling and reduces the number of orders that result in an inventory error state. The partial order fulfillment settings work by removing out-of-stock line items from an order and automatically retrying the order.
For more information and opt-in instructions, see Partial order fulfillment.
