Delete Sold Out Attributes

[miloport]

We control inventory through inventory variants and do not like that sold out Attributes/Variants still are available in the Attribute Search Facet for Size. We have the issue with a lot of products with attributes out of stock and want to remove them from the filters. So if we have a product that originally had 10 sizes and we are down to the last size all 10 sizes still show in the attribute filter and that is what we need to eliminate.

Is it an issue to delete those attributes that have an inventory variant sold out. The inventory variants will still have the same product code and if we add the same Attribute back they seem to just reconnect properly. It is kind of a maintenance nightmare to have to go thru all products with variants to determine which are sold out and need to be removed. Of course, we just add them back when we get those sizes back in. We just have a lot, several thousand, of one-off products that will never come back. So customers hit a lot of products that are sold out when they filter by size and this is more than annoying and extremely frustrating. Basically I want the filters to only filter what is actually in stock.

What are the cons of deleting these sold out attributes? They are basically place holders for inventory variants.

Feedback appreciated. Thanks

[dreamingdigital]

Deleting the variant product that's attached to an attribute won't delete the attribute. I think that's on purpose so things don't magically get deleted on you. But I'm not the boss over there ;)

Deleting the attribute that a variant is attached to will remove the variant association with that attribute and since that variant is probably not active that's (I assume) the more correct path to take. Then go and clean up inactive variant products with no inventory.

[dreamingdigital]

Maybe somebody can chime in on how to make an import file that deletes a specific attribute option. I assume it's probably a radio button or select menu option item so please remember that on whomever provides the XML import sample.

[miloport]

I missed the fact that if you have Size attributes Small, Medium, Large and Medium sells out the Medium Attribute with the attached sold-out Medium Inventory Variant is still active in the Size Attribute Search Facet - that is the problem.

If you have 200 products and you are sold out of a lot of Medium Black Products there is a chance a customer could hit sold out Medium Black products multiple times in a row which is very frustrating when you may have 50 Medium Black Products in stock but they hit the wrong ones. We want to sell what you have currently and not have customers bail because they keep hitting the ones we do not have. We have a retail store and in-store customers get frustrated with this as do our employees.

If you delete just the Attributes with attached sold out variants they can be removed from the Size Attribute Search Filter but there has to be a better way.

The number that sits next to the Size Attribute Filter, Small(52) Medium(128), is just a count of Attributes with that Name. That number should really be the number of actual in stock Attributes with that name. When those numbers are generated it has to loop through the attributes to arrive at that number. Why can't an additional code structure be added to limit that number of products where the inventory variant attached to that name have stock greater than 0 and include as well products within this that you do not enforce stock on.

[lesliekirk]

Maybe somebody can chime in on how to make an import file that deletes a specific attribute option. I assume it's probably a radio button or select menu option item so please remember that on whomever provides the XML import sample.

dreamingdigital Colin, did you ever get this figured out? I only have a few thousand attributes to delete.