When overselling or pre-selling products, Airhouse will keep track of the purchased quantities on orders placed to create a first in, first out (FIFO) processing queue of backlogged orders. Note that turning on the ability to oversell can affect your fulfillment time and cost. Each method has unique pros/cons outlined below.
Out of Stock: If an order consists of an out-of-stock product, the order will not be processed or shipped since there is no inventory in the warehouse.
Backorder: A backorder is when there is not enough inventory to fulfill an order, but due to a data discrepancy, the order was sent to be processed by the warehouse. Your customers may receive notification that the order is being processed, but the order will not be fulfilled until the product is restocked.
The most common scenarios for backorders are:
Oversold: When a product is oversold, there are more orders that product than inventory is available. With Airhouse, you can choose to oversell, or have a pre-sale for certain products.
Within Shopify and Squarespace settings, you are able to set up pre-sales or choose to oversell a certain product so that your customers can continue to place orders, despite not having inventory in the warehouse ready to ship. You can use this to gain insight on forecasting demand for manufacturing.
However, with overselling the order delays can affect many of your customers. Often times this can lead to increased customer service requests such as cancellations or shipping date inquiries, and it's important to note that customers who paid for expedited shipping will be kept waiting until inventory is stocked and ready to ship.
If you choose to allow backorders we recommend you: