How to indicate that my product is available for pre-order or that it will soon be back in stock?

The availability of a product is automatically retrieved by our module from the quantity you enter for each product. So if you find that some of your products are marked "Out of stock" in your Google Shopping ads, it's because their quantity in PrestaShop is less than or equal to zero.

However, if you don't want your products to appear "Out of stock" on Google Shopping, the module allows you either to exclude out of stock products (via an exclusion rule), or to activate an option that allows you to always indicate that your products are available, even if, in reality, they are not. This option, labelled "About product availability", can be found in the "Feed data options" tab and is explained here. But, this option does not allow you to specify that, although a product is out-of-stock, it can still be ordered, as you allow pre-orders or orders for products that are currently being replenished.

That's why in the Pro version of Google Merchant Center (or the "Advanced" plan of the module Google Merchant Center by subscription) we enable you to go even further in displaying the availability of your products thanks to the "preorder" and "backorder" tags. To do this, you need to activate the "Take into account availability date ("preorder" and "backorder" tags)" option:

Depending on what you've specified for the "About product availability" option (whether or not you've decided to force the display of products as available even if they aren't), the tags will be different. The tag value also depends on what you've set in each product file, in case of out of stock (allow or not orders if stock is less than or equal to zero). This is done via the "When out of stock" setting in the "Stocks" tab if the product is a standard product (without combinations), or the "Combinations" tab if the product has combinations.

Here are the possible scenarios:

1. You have decided to only indicate products as available IF they are actually in stock:

    

   

    

   In this case:

   • If you have indicated an availability date for the product concerned AND:
     
     
     • its quantity is greater than zero: whatever the value of the "When out of stock" option in the product file, the availability tag in the feed will be "In stock"
     • its quantity is less than or equal to zero:
       
       
       • If the "When out of stock" option on the product file is set to "Allow orders": then the availability tag in the feed will be "Preorder"
       • If the "When out of stock" option in the product file is set to "Deny orders": then the availability tag in the feed will be "Out of stock"
         
         
   • If you have NOT indicated an availability date for the product concerned AND:
     
     
     • Its quantity is greater than zero: whatever the value of the "When out of stock" option in the product file, the availability tag in the feed will be "In stock"
     • Its quantity is less than or equal to zero:
       
       
       • If the "When out of stock" option on the product file is set to "Allow orders": then the availability tag in the feed will be "Backorder"
       • If the "When out of stock" option on the product file is set to "Deny orders": then the availability tag in the feed will be "Out of stock"

    

   Here are the different cases summarized in a table:

    

   

    

2. You have decided to always indicate products as available, EVEN IF they are in fact out of stock:

    

   

    

   In this case:

   • If you have indicated an availability date for the product concerned AND:
     
     
     • its quantity is greater than zero: whatever the value of the "When out of stock" option in the product file, the availability tag in the feed will be "In stock"
     • its quantity is less than or equal to zero:
       
       
       • If the "When out of stock" option on the product file is set to "Allow orders": then the availability tag in the feed will be "Preorder"
       • If the "When out of stock" option in the product file is set to "Deny orders": then the availability tag in the feed will be "Backorder"
         
         
   • If you have NOT indicated an availability date for the product concerned AND:
     
     
     • Its quantity is greater than zero: whatever the value of the "When out of stock" option in the product file, the availability tag in the feed will be "In stock"
     • Its quantity is less than or equal to zero:
       
       
       • If the "When out of stock" option on the product file is set to "Allow orders": then the availability tag in the feed will be "Backorder"
       • If the "When out of stock" option on the product file is set to "Deny orders": then the availability tag in the feed will be "In stock"

    

   Here are the different cases summarized in a table:

    

   

    

Finally, please note that it is possible to export out-of-stock products (i.e. with quantities less than or equal to zero) only if you have allowed orders for them. To find out more, read this FAQ.