How to Allow, Manage & Bulk Edit WooCommerce Backorders

Do you know you can allow your customers to place an order even if items are out of stock?

Your hard work behind all promotional activities would not be in vain. In other words, you won’t lose your visitors to your competitors.

It’s all possible with backorders.

This article will help you understand WooCommerce backorders and how to better manage them via a plugin.

So, let’s begin.

Understanding backorders with a simple example

WooCommerce backorder is one way you can accept orders for products that are out of stock.

The traditional way of accepting orders is to display the in-stock label and specify the expected delivery date.

With the WooCommerce backorder manager, store managers can have an interface that displays the time the product will be back in stock, followed by the projected delivery time.

Suppose a customer named Robin visited your online store to purchase a smartphone and a headphone. Now, the store has the required headphones in stock.

The product page displays the expected delivery date to be two days from the current date.

However, the smartphone isn’t available, and it would on average take 4-5 days to get the product from the supplier and another three days to deliver to the customer.

Here, if you allow backorder, it means the customer can place the order for the smartphone. But they will receive it later. The email notification keeps the customers updated about the item availability.

This way, the WooCommerce store can effectively meet the requirements of the customers while keeping them informed and updated about the actual date of availability and delivery.

WooCommerce backorders benefits

What benefits will businesses get if they allow backorders in WooCommerce stores?

Well, the answer is simple:

• Enables buyers to place an order even if the product is out of stock. This way you can refrain your visitors from shifting to the competitor’s site. So, if you talk about out-of-stock vs backorder, backorder has the upper hand.
• Backorders help win customers’ trust as they have the ease of ordering in advance.
• Delivering backorders in the said time builds customer loyalty, benefiting the site.

An excellent way to manage backorders on your WooCommerce store is by using a WooCommerce backorder plugin. We will get into the details in the next section.

How to allow backorders in WooCommerce?

WooCommerce by default allows you to manage product stock. Enter the stock quantity, and WooCommerce auto-manages inventory and auto-updates stock status as Stock, Out of Stock, or On Backorder.

However, to manage backorders, you need to:

• Enable the Manage stock option.
• Set the Stock status to In Stock even though the stock quantity is 0 or less.

This will help accept orders even after the stock hits zero.

Once you enable the Allow backorders option, you get further three options:

1. Do not allow.
2. Allow, but notify customer.
3. Allow.

Do not allow and Allow mainly suggest whether backorders can be placed for a particular product.

If the option of Allow, but notify customer is selected, the customer can be allowed to place an order and will be notified about the date the product will be back in stock.

The default WooCommerce also enables you to search and see products that are on backorder.

But default WooCommerce backorder management falls short in a few significant areas. Let’s discuss that.

Default WooCommerce backorder management shortcomings

For more than ten products, this is a concern. Here is what it can lead you to:

Need to go to each product to set it on backorder

This is very frustrating and time-consuming. Just imagine if you have hundreds and thousands of products, would you do them one by one?

That means you can’t bulk edit WooCommerce backorders.

Definitely, you need a solution that speeds up this entire process.

No advanced search filters

What if you want to set products on backorder based on categories or their sale price? What if you want to set products having specific attributes on backorder?

You can’t do that using default WooCommerce.

No inline edit, no export

You can also neither set a product directly on backorder nor export backorder products. This is where you would need a plugin.

All these shortcomings can be eliminated with the simple solution: Smart Manager.

How to manage WooCommerce backorders easily and in bulk with Smart Manager?

Smart Manager plugin enables store owners to manage and operate their stock effectively and on the go.

Offering an Excel-like spreadsheet view and blazing speed, Smart Manager allows you to keep track of your WooCommerce inventory and manage it from a single page.

Few reasons why Smart Manager is regarded as the best WooCommerce backorder plugin:

Edit backorders directly

You can set backorders for both simple and variable products directly (inline edit) using Smart Manager.

Click on the backorder entry for any product as shown, choose an option from the drop-down and save.

Similarly, you can directly add new products using the ‘Add Row’ tab and set it on backorder.

Bulk edit backorders based on search filters

This is the most-used feature of Smart Manager – bulk edit.

The plugin also supports advanced search capabilities that make use of the AND and OR operators to filter the right products.

Simply select products based on filters and apply the bulk edit operation.

• Click on the Advanced Search toggle and enter your conditions in the slide-over panel.



• Select desired products, click on the Bulk edit option, enter the conditions in a slide-over panel and click on Update.

Offer discounts for backorders

At times, customers may not purchase goods that are on backorders. This is one thing that every WooCommerce store owner is worried about.

To deal with this, the Smart Manager plugin gives the ease to set discounts on backorders in bulk or using inline editing.

The offer can be created for specific products. Offering discounts for backorder products helps boost sales.

Export WooCommerce backorders

The plugin enables you to apply advanced filters and export details about backorder products.

Consider that you want to export backorder products containing only the product name and sale price.

• Click on the Columns icon at the top left corner.
• Drag and drop columns to add or remove the required columns (Here, keep only Backorders, Sale price and Product Name columns enabled).
• Click on Update to make the changes.
• Click on Export icon.

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Managing stock better with Smart Manager

Not just backorders, but Smart Manager is an excellent plugin when it comes to managing stock and inventory.

• Add new stock directly in real-time.
• Manage stock for each product.
• Manage stock variations and stock logs and also export them.
• Set regular price and sale price in bulk.
• Inline and bulk edit stock fields.
• Manage fields added by custom plugins (Subscriptions, Bookings, Memberships, Product add-ons, Cost of Goods).
• Simple and advanced stock filters.
• Personalized stock management view.
• Delete stock (Delete all products).
• Add featured images & product thumbnails.
• Manage orders, coupons, users, or any other WordPress post type.

More about WooCommerce stock management

Conclusion

It is important to give your customers the ease to place orders even when the product is out of stock. Backorder is an ideal way to keep customers on your site.

Using a WooCommerce backorder plugin like Smart Manager, you can handle orders well, manage orders in bulk and even offer discounts, keeping your customers satisfied and happy.

So if you are looking to optimize your WooCommerce store options, manage inventory and backorders and control stock, the Smart Manager plugin would serve the purpose best.

Get Smart Manager plugin