I'm stumped - inactive products become active

[RMWAnnie]

I cannot track down this gremlin ...

We have several products that we make inactive when we're out of stock. Suddenly, we'll get an order for one of those products. The first time it happened I assumed I had just neglected to make the product inactive. I went back into admin and "reset" the product to inactive. I then got another order for the same "inactive" product and when I went back into admin is was active again! (This time I had a witness that saw me make the product inactive, so at least I knew I wasn't losing my marbles.)

We use Viking Coders Order Manager, so I thought customers might be reordering and that was making the product active again. But my conditional for reordering inactive products through that module is working correctly. I tried reordering an "Out of Stock" item and was unable. The attempt didn't change the inactive staus of the product.

The products are also assigned to an availability group, so I thought that may have some bearing. But when I signed into the group, the products were missing, just as they should be.

I cannot for the life of me figure out how customers are ordering inactive products and how the products are being reset to active. They don't appear in the store, they don't appear in the product list and they don't appear when signed into an availability group. I can't reorder via VC Order Manager system. A search of the store won't bring them up. I am completely stumped! I cannot duplicate it.

We are using Merchant 5.5 production release 6. The url is www.leathercordusa.com and one of the inactive products that has reset to active several time is code C6052.

I am the only one who works with admin other then deleting expired baskets and old batches. No one else knows how to change a products active status.

If anyone can help me solve this one, I would be most grateful. I've run out of ideas.

Thanks,
Annie

[Bruce - PhosphorMedia]

Re: I'm stumped - inactive products become active

Some straws to grasp at.

When you make a product inactice (assuming from the admin) is that the ONLY tab open. (I've been bitten by they "Its set active in another tab...and then update that tab for a completely different reason.)

Restock module?

The only other thing you might not be aware of is, IF a customer adds a product in their basket, and it then becomes out of stock, if the basket doesn't time out...they can come back later and still order that product. (I.e., if using stock, you should use a very short basket timeout...something like 15/20 minutes tops.)

[wcw]

Re: I'm stumped - inactive products become active

Do you do flat file imports and include the inventory count as one of the columns?

[RMWAnnie]

Re: I'm stumped - inactive products become active

Thanks for the reply, Bruce.

I had originally set the product inactive from the product list "edit here" checkbox. But when it reactivated, I set it inactive from the product page.

We don't use a restock module. We do use Viking Coders Inventory module, but it isn't set to do anything but send an email when a product hits 0 inventory.

We do have a long basket time-out setting (120 minutes, I think), but the last time I set that particular product to inactive was Thursday afternoon and the reorder was Friday night. And this morning the product was showing active again.

[RMWAnnie]

Re: I'm stumped - inactive products become active

Hi Bill,

We don't flat file imports with inventory, but we do use Stoneedge Order Manager, which communicates inventory changes to Miva through VC Inventory Manager. I gave that some thought, but can't see how a product's active status could be changed through that process.

[Ksaluzzi]

Re: I'm stumped - inactive products become active

Hi Annie,

We have a similar setup (Miva w/ VC Inventory & Stone Edge POS) and experienced the same problem. Here's what we discovered. If a product was inactive in Miva, but was purchased in our retail store via Stone Edge POS, the product was re-activated in Miva. I don't remember if there was a solution with Stone Edge, but I would contact them with your issue. It's been a few years and my memory is not the best. I hope this points you in the right direction.

[RMWAnnie]

Re: I'm stumped - inactive products become active

Thanks so much, Ksuluzzi.

We process a lot of phone orders through Stoneedge and it is entirely possible some of our folks put in orders for customers willing to wait on a backorder. I'll call SE and see what they can do.

Thanks everyone for your help.

Annie

[RMWAnnie]

Re: I'm stumped - inactive products become active

I checked our backorders in Stoneedge, but none contain the "suspect" products other than those that came in through the website.

[RMWAnnie]

Re: I'm stumped - inactive products become active

Just an update if anyone else should ever come across this bizarre problem.

I just learned on the StoneEdge forum that if SEOM sends an inventory update of any kind to a product that's not active on Miva, it will activate the product.

I've assigned all inactive products to an availability group to keep them hidden.

At least I now know I haven't gone looney-tunes.