Event Tickets / WooCommerce Qty Discrepancy

[Paul]

Hello,

My client has an event and the Stock quantity shows as 3 when editing the ticket. If I click ‘Edit in WooCommerce’, the Stock Qty on the Inventory tab shows 4.

Meanwhile, on the front-end, the single event page shows 3 available but a total of 4 can be selected for purchase!

If I reduce the stock in WooCommerce by 1, to match the ticket stock, the ticket stock also gets reduced by 1 and now shows 2! There is always a difference of 1 between the plugins for this particular event.

I’m not entirely sure if a ticket was cancelled by a customer of my client and/or if the qty’s were changed manually but I thought the Ticket stock and WooCommerce stock were the same variable?

At this stage, it appears this is the only event with the problem but if I can identify the issue early, I can prevent it happening again in the future.

If you could shed any light on this little problem, I would be grateful.

Kind regards,

Paul.
[posting on behalf of client]

[Hunter]

Hi Paul,

Thanks for the post 🙂

We are currently aware of the issue you describe and have plans to update how the ticket quantity reflects the actual number of tickets available.

I did a test transaction and one way I discovered strange behavior similar to what you described was by doing a manual transaction. I kept “Pending Payment” as the order status and hit “Save Order”. The ticket stock decreased by one on the front end even though a transaction had not actually taken place.

With that said, I’ve added this forum thread to our logged bug so the developers can reference it when working towards a solution. Stay tuned to your WP admin and theeventscalendar.com/blog for a potential fix.

Again, thank you for the post and the patience while we work towards a resolution. Have a good week and thanks for choosing PRO 🙂

[Paul]

Hi Hunter,

Thanks for your reply.

We had one or two issues with our payment portal when customers entered incorrect passwords at the ‘3D Authentication’ stage https://www.visaeurope.com/media/images/VerifiedByVisa73-168.png

Basically, our website was not handling their password errors correctly and unfriendly php errors were returned to the customers’ browser.

We seem to have sorted that problem now but your test transaction scenario above could well have similarities with our stock discrepancy issue.

When our customer entered wrong ‘3D Authentication’ information and a php error was returned, the order was left Pending Payment in WooCommerce for an hour (the duration we have set).

At the end of the 1 hour duration, WooCommerce automatically sets the status of the order to Cancelled.

Maybe WooCommerce is automatically returning the cancelled order back to stock but Event Tickets isn’t?

Or, maybe Event Tickets reduces its stock before a successful transaction and WooCommerce waits for a successful transaction?

I have a test site and if I get the time, I will test these theories further and report back to help with your investigations.

Kind regards,

Paul.

[Hunter]

Hey Paul,

Thanks for the informative post. It sounds like you’re right on – I believe you’re experiencing the bug we’ve got logged. We are working on a more precise way to track stock of tickets across Event Tickets and WooCommerce, so stay tuned for any potential remedy.

We look forward to hearing back about your findings as we are tracking this thread. Thank you again for keeping us updated and keep an eye out in your WP admin and theeventscalendar.com/blog for a fix.

Have a good week!

[Paul]

Hi Hunter,

My results from a test event are here. Available tickets QTY at the start are 10:

——————————

Back-end status:
Ticket Stock 10
WooCommerce Stock 10

Front-end status:
10 out of 10 available

Add 1 ticket to basket then Proceed to payment portal but did not click purchase…

Back-end status:
Ticket Stock 9 Sold 0 of 10
WooCommerce Stock 10 Pending Payment
[stock discrepancy of 1]

Front-end status:
9 out of 10 available (but can add 10 to basket!)

Wait for an hour – order automatically cancelled…

Back-end status:
Ticket Stock 10 Sold 0 of 10 (1 unit cancelled)
WooCommerce Stock 10 Cancelled
[stock returns to normal – no stock discrepancy]

Front-end status:
10 out of 10 available

WooCommerce order manually changed from Cancelled to Completed…

Back-end status:
Ticket Stock 9 Sold 1 of 10
WooCommerce Stock 10 Completed
[stock discrepancy of 1]

Try to resolve discrepancy by reducing WooCommerce stock by 1 to match Ticket Stock…

Back-end status:
Ticket Stock 8 Sold 1 of 9
WooCommerce Stock 9 Completed

Still a discrepancy of 1.

——————————

The situation where I do not click purchase might also emulate incorrect card details being entered at checkout, i.e., Pending Payment.

The first discrepancy scenario seems to occur because Event Tickets has decreased its stock level before a successful transaction has taken place. WooCommerce does not. My own opinion is that WooCommerce has handled this situation correctly and Event Tickets has not.

Waiting for an hour to allow the Pending Payment order to automatically Cancel, returns the cancelled Ticket back to stock.

The second discrepancy scenario happens when the status of the automatically Cancelled order is manually changed to Completed (this could be because the customer decides to make a manual payment instead). Ticket stock is reduced by 1 but WooCommerce stock is not. In my opinion, Event Tickets is correct here and WooCommerce is not.

Once a discrepancy happens, it becomes impossible to rectify, because increasing or decreasing stock for WooCommerce or Tickets increases or decreases both by the same amount.

Regardless of whether WooCommerce or Event Tickets has handled stock levels incorrectly or not, shouldn’t Event Tickets be using the same variable as WooCommerce to manage stock levels? A discrepancy would be impossible if the same variable was used, and stock levels could be manually corrected if required.

A discrepancy of 1 might not be noticeable for an event which has over a hundred people or more attending, but my client has very limited places available at relatively high prices. This can be very problematic when places need to be monitored closely and .csv exports need to tally exactly. Any update to this problem would be very welcome.

Kind regards,

Paul.

[Hunter]

Hi Paul,

Thank you so much for the detailed response. I don’t have any solid answer for you at this time, but hang tight and hopefully we can get this addressed in the next maintenance release. It is a top priority and we are treating is as such.

Again, thanks for the useful information and I look forward to getting this resolved once and for all! Enjoy your week 🙂

[George]

Hey folks,

I wanted to update this thread with some information from our developers, who’ve been taking a close look at some stock-related issues and found something interesting.

The essential takeaway from this review of stock features is this, to quote one of our developers:

We reduce the stock for pending payments to avoid the chance for over-selling a ticket product.

We take this directly from WooCommerce itself. So, at this time there is not a bug here, to the best of our knowledge and after investigating.

Want to ensure proper stock counting when placing manual orders and such? Well, as long as you mark the order “Complete” and ensure that there are NO pending payments or anything, the stock should be updated fine. Otherwise, the stock will be reduced to prevent the over-selling of ticket products.

I hope this information is helpful; if you find that even when orders ARE marked complete, and all payments are complete, stock issues persist, then open a new thread on these forums with a link back to this thread for reference.

We can continue a conversation and investigation from there.

Thank you for your patience with this!
George

[Support Droid]

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