I need to get a rough idea as to the cost to get someone to add a reliable method of stock control on to a ecommerce website. The shopping cart I want to use has no features to control stock, so would need to get someone to add this feature. The database on the server will be MySQL.

 

Will also need to add a method to check if the item is in stock on the detail pages for the different items sold. If not in stock then buy button is not shown instead an out of stock message.

 

Basically a total stock management system to prevent overselling

 

Any suggestions and guidance in this matter would be much appreciated.

Thank you for your reply railport.

 

The problem is I have thought through a similiar process, but I dont know how to incorporate the various aspects. I am relatively new to the whole process of getting a website up and running.

 

Hence the reason I thought to get a rough idea of the level of work and the cost to get a professional to do this work.

Well it's noit very hard, but initially you set your business rules.

 

YOu then amend the following pages:

 

Detail Page: check stock level and display message, disbale buy button if out of stock

 

Shopping basket page: check that people don't update cart amounts that will exceed stock levels

 

Checkout - when you're getting a response from your gateway - E.g. paypals IPN - you'd create the order as usual and update the product stock levels.

 

This totally depends on integration and setups. Remember just checking if an item is in stock isn't going to be enough for popular OS commerce systems. Sometimes you may have to use a stack or database transactions to prevent simultaneous purchases, i.e. two people on the same page, at the same time hit "buy." They will both get the item and only one of them may be charged.

 

Many sites i've fixed suffered from this; they were very popular and crackers had found out that if they transfer money to two people (their own accounts) at EXACTLY the same time their money would be effectively doubled.

 

When developing a system such as an OS commerce PLAN PLAN PLAN.

The shopping cart I want to use has no features to control stock, so would need to get someone to add this feature.

So why not use a cart system that already has an adequate stock control system?

This totally depends on integration and setups. Remember just checking if an item is in stock isn't going to be enough for popular OS commerce systems. Sometimes you may have to use a stack or database transactions to prevent simultaneous purchases, i.e. two people on the same page, at the same time hit "buy." They will both get the item and only one of them may be charged.

 

Many sites i've fixed suffered from this; they were very popular and crackers had found out that if they transfer money to two people (their own accounts) at EXACTLY the same time their money would be effectively doubled.

 

When developing a system such as an OS commerce PLAN PLAN PLAN.

 

The way I planned to check the order quantity in the cart with the stock, if not in stock then the checkout button is not displayed. Using recordsets and show if regions. Perform checks at the checkout and confirm stage if not in stck show error message. Maybe adding a lock on product when an item is added to cart for a certain period of time.

 

Update query to adjust stock.

Well what I've described above is a simplified view what is happening. It's likely to be a little more involved in a bigger system.

 

However, this is where knowing your software/code comes in. If you've wrote itself then it's not a huge problem, but if you're using a huge premade solution it's quite time consuming to add bespoke things in.

 

The cart is not a huge premade solution, it is made to be customisable. The cart is a dreamweaver based cart and can be modified to add the control I am loooking to achieve.

So why not use a cart system that already has an adequate stock control system?

 

The problem is not all cart software explain how they tackle stock control and some take a lot of work to modify the look. Also some take a lot of work to add your own designs for the layout of the website.

That's true, some documentation is lacking. Saying that I've never found a problem running stock control, "modifying the look"is just tweaking HTML/CSS and the odd template tag, and "adding your own design" is the same - HTML and CSS.