Pre-orders for "out of stock" products

[animal dreams]

We currently flag products which are out of stock using the stock monitoring.
This prevents customers from placing orders.

I would like to be able to change the add to cart button when items are out of stock and still allow customers to place pre-orders (or back orders) online.

Any suggestions?

[fleetwood]

A couple of suggestions:

1) Insert your own OUT OF STOCK message in the product description, and change the Add To Cart text to PRE-ORDER.

2) Set up an alternative product layout, which incorporates the OUT OF STOCK message, and select this layout for any affected items.

V8 gives you the option of adding conditional events, so that you can set the message to change based on the stock level, without having stock control remove the add to cart button

[Mark H]

On page 13 of the V7 Advanced User Guide there is a method for automatically showing a different message against a product depending on whether the item is in stock or not (relies on you to do regular updates!) - in www.aquazuro.co.uk you will see this working - if an item is out of stock the message is along the lines of "out of stock - please allow 14 days" - the add to cart button doesn't change so customers can "pre-order". However, if you have different out of stock items with different lead times this method might not be suitable (ie one item is out of stock but you will get more in 1 week, another is out of stock but you might not get more for 6 months).