Hi ShipStation Team,
I am looking to migrate our full inventory management system over to ShipStation, but I've hit a roadblock regarding how pre-orders and backorders are handled.
Currently, our business relies heavily on pre-orders. To manage this effectively, we need to be able to see exactly how many units are backordered for a given SKU at a glance.
Right now, ShipStation's native inventory feature does not allow stock levels to drop into negative numbers. Using the "Do Not Track" option also defeats the purpose of centralizing our inventory management, as we lose total visibility on the backordered amounts.
Please allow SKU quantities to go into negative numbers when tracking inventory.
Allowing negative stock would let merchants instantly see exactly how many items they owe customers (e.g., -15 means we need to source or manufacture 15 units to fulfill pending pre-orders).
Support confirmed this isn't currently possible and suggested I bring it to the Product Design team here. I know a lot of other e-commerce merchants who run pre-order models would heavily benefit from this update.
Thanks for considering!