FAQs on Inventory Controls, Sold Out and Waitlisted Events

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1. What tools are available for automated inventory tracking?
2. How is the number of available seats calculated, which setting do I set in the editor?
3. What happens if an event item hits zero seats available?
4. What happens if an event with a waitlist gets an open seat?
5. When does the system send out the waitlist system email, is it as soon as the seat becomes available?
6. How does the system decide who gets the open seat? Is there a priority or is it first come, first serve?
7. Are there any options to use a priority method to decide who gets the next open seat?
8. Does the customer ever get removed from the waitlist?
9. Can a customer be on more than one waitlist?

What tools are available for automated inventory tracking?

Full Partner offers general out-of-the-box inventory tracking with the option to turn on a checkout timer and activate enhanced automated inventory control code.

Checkout Timer If you have enabled the checkout timer along with Inventory controls, this enables a check out timer facility as well as a special ongoing background process that will automatically return an item to inventory even if it was found in someone’s shopping cart. This would be done if a certain amount of time determined by a setting set by you, has passed and a message would appear to that customer who lost their item. This time sensitive inventory facility is designed to mitigate abandoned carts and items taken out of inventory while customers take too long to shop around and there may be a high demand for an event that other shoppers would like to have a chance to register for. You can work with your Full Partner Support Technician to get these enhanced inventory settings enabled for your shopping cart and checkout pages.

*Note you do not have to enable the checkout timer for the system to track inventory, this will only enable the monitoring of the event items in the shopping cart and checkout process and set and enforce a time limit for how long someone can have an event item in their cart.

How is the number of available seats calculated, which setting do I set in the editor?

For the automatic inventory control, the system utilizes the value in the starting inventory minus the number of registered records to calculate the number of Available Seats in Inventory. For this reason we do not allow you to edit the values for registered or available inventory in the event editor. The only way to manually adjust inventory in the editor is to either add/take away the quantity of seats entered in the starting inventory field in the event editor. 

Unregistering or deleting a registered record automatically will add those seats back into available inventory. However, keep in mind that refunding an order for an event registration does not automatically return a seat back to inventory, it must be done manually as an additional step by setting the associated event registration record to unregistered. (See Also: How to Refund Event Registration Orders with Return to Inventory)

What happens if an event hits zero seats available?

To review, the available inventory math looks like this: Available Seats = Starting Inventory – Number of Registered Records. If the available seats hits at or falls below zero, a couple things will happen:

• The Add to Cart Button will get replaced with a Sold Out message, disallowing any further registration from the website. (Note Admin orders do not get disabled by a zero inventory, so it is important for the order management team to pay attention to the event item inventory when creating the orders. There is a notation of the available inventory in the order editor next to each event item see here: (Link to Screenshot)
• If enabled at the event item level, the waitlist facility gets activated, and a form to allow the customer to add their email to the waitlist appears. (See - How to activate waitlist option in the event editor.)

What happens if an event with a waitlist gets an open seat?

When a seat gets returned to inventory on a sold out event that has the waitlist activated for that item, and the available item number rises to at or above 1, an automatic process system email will get sent to anyone on the waitlist at the same time, alerting them there may be a seat open.

When does the system send out the waitlist system email, is it as soon as the seat becomes available?

This system automated process for inventory control runs every about every 8 minutes or so to scan for abandoned orders, returns those seats to inventory, scans the starting inventory, and current registered records then makes sure the available inventory is accurate and adjusts the available inventory. After that process runs, the system then finds any qualifying waitlists subscribers to send the automated system email to.

How does the system decide who gets the open seat? Is there a priority or is it first come, first serve?

At this time, who gets the open seat is first come first serve and there is no automated priority control. A customer who received the email and clicks through to go to the event to grab the open seat may get there in time to secure the open seat, or it may have gotten taken by someone who got there just before them. In this case the customer who missed out will remain on the waitlist for that item and may get another chance later if another seat opens up.

Are there any options to use a priority method to decide who gets the next open seat?

At this time we do not have any code in place to automatically handle this. You can try to monitor it manually, but it takes a lot of attention. We do add to the customer waitlist in the order they were added, so you could in theory closely monitor the sold out events, then when a refund for a sold out event comes in, do not return the seat to inventory on the refund. Instead, see who is first in line for the waitlist, and reach out individually to them and arrange to sell them the seat in the back end. Once you have secured the freed up seat, then you would edit the event registration for the person who canceled and set it to unregistered.  In this way the inventory does not ever get set to above zero, and thus you can keep the system email from getting sent out.

Does the customer ever get removed from the waitlist?

If someone was on a waitlist for an item, and they end up getting to register for that event item when a seat opens, we do remove their name from the waitlist for that event item, so they would no longer receive any future open seat notifications for that event item. If they are on other waitlists, they will remain there until they are able to register.

Can a customer be on more than one waitlist?

Yes we manage the waitlist at the level of the item, so a customer can be on more than one waitlist across several events, as well as on a waitlist for multiple items within one event.

Click Next to review the different topics on Event Registration and Order Management, or you may jump ahead to a specific topic by visiting the Course Content page for a linked Index.

Related Topics:

• Create Event Registration via Administrator Order
• Create an Event Registration Order for Contact and Another
• Event Registration with Different Attendee than Payee
• Create a Complimentary Event Registration via Order for Accurate Sales Reporting
• Manually Create an Event Registration without an Order
• Cancel an Event Registration with Refund
• Cancel an Event Registration with No Refund
• Add Key Finder Columns for Best Event Overview Options
• How to Confirm a Contact is Registered for an Event
• FAQs on Inventory Controls, Sold Out and Waitlisted Events