My products are showing "not in stock" and I don't know why

Question

If I list the item as "out of stock" the label changes to red and says "OUT OF STOCK" on the product. If I set it as "in stock" the product says "Availability: not in Stock"

I can even set a specific quantity and manage stockkeeping and it still says "Availability: not in Stock"

I don't know what the difference between "not in stock" and "out of stock" is but the latter is bold, red and clearly a problem. The "not in stock" label shows up no matter what and you can still buy a product.

Where is this property kept? What is it tracking and how do I get this to go away?

Answer 1

I believe the difference is "Not in stock" relates to products that can be backordered, and "Out of stock" means sold out, with no plans for getting more.

If you are not managing inventory (that is, you manually set a product to Out of Stock when it sells out), then you need to ensure that "Manage stock?" is unchecked on all products (and product variations).

If you've used a CSV Import/Export tool, sometimes stock levels that should be NULL get set to zero, and that's what causes the issue. I hope this helps!