Manage item availability

With the REST API, you can build custom solutions for your merchants to manage item availability.
Example: You can create a custom solution to remove an out-of-stock item from the ordering process until the item is available for ordering again. This solution improves order accuracy because customers can order only the available items in the stock.

Manage item availability on the Merchant Dashboard

Merchants can manage an item's availability automatically or manually on the Merchant Dashboard.

• Auto-manage item availability—To use the auto-manage feature, merchants must turn on Track stock on the Inventory Setup page. If Track stock is turned off, the merchant can only manually control an item's availability.

• Automatically decrease stock count—When a merchant is tracking stock, they can also turn on the Update item count after each sale to automatically adjust the stock count for point of sale (POS) and online orders.

  • When the stock count reaches zero, items are unavailable for ordering.
  • When the stock is updated to at least one, the item is available for ordering.

• Manually manage item availability—Merchants can use the Inventory app on the Dashboard and the Register, Dining, and Inventory apps on their devices to manually manage the availability of items.

Webhook notifications and developer action

When an item becomes unavailable, Clover sends a webhook notification that the item is updated. The webhook message contains the merchantId, webhook topic, and the item Universally Unique Identifier (UUID).
You need to send a GET request for information about the item's status.

View item stock count, availability, and auto-manage status

The items object indicates each item in the merchant inventory. To view an item stock count, whether or not an item is available for ordering, and if the item is auto-managed, send a GET request to /v3/merchants/{merchant_id}/items/{item_id}.

Request sample

curl --request GET \
--url 'https://sandbox.dev.clover.com/v3/merchants/{merchant_id}/items/{item_id}' \
--header 'content-type: application/json' \
--header 'Authorization: Bearer {access_token}'

Response sample

Response values:

• "available": false if the item is not available for ordering.
• "available": true if the item is available for ordering.
• "autoManage": true if the merchant has set up auto-managing.
• "autoManage": false is the default setting.

The following sample response displays that the item "20 Wings" is auto-managed ("autoManage": true). Since the stock count is zero ("itemStock": 0), the item ("20 Wings") is unavailable for ordering ("available": false).

{
  "id": "0ZHZ8Y66S63EP", 
  "hidden": false, 
  "available": false, 
  "autoManage": true,
  "name": "20 Wings", 
  "alternateName": "", 
  "code": "", 
  "sku": "", 
  "price": 1295, 
  "priceType": "FIXED", 
  "defaultTaxRates": false, 
  "unitName": "", 
  "cost": 0, 
  "isRevenue": true, 
  "itemStock": 0, 
  "modifiedTime": 1495477636000
}

Set item as unavailable (manually)

If an item is managed manually, it is not dependent on the stock count and must be removed manually from ordering when it is unavailable:

1. Send a POST request to/v3/merchants/{merchant_id}/items/{item_id}.
2. Set "available:" to false.

On the Merchant Dashboard > Inventory > Items page, the merchant can manually change an item's availability.

Update item stock quantity

1. Send a POST request to /v3/merchants/{mId}/item_stocks/{itemId}.
2. Include the required quantity value. For more information, see Manage items and item groups.

On the Merchant Dashboard > Inventory > Items page, the merchant can manually add to or remove from an item stock count. On the Item tracking page, the merchant can change the item to unavailable or available.