# Allocating stock

> Allocate stock as soon as an order is pending, so products cannot be sold through another sales channel.

Some orders come in before they are ready to be processed, for example because the payment has not been completed yet. These orders get the status **Pending** in ShopLinkr. Normally the stock of such an order still counts towards the quantity offered on your sales channels. With the setting **Allocate stock while pending** that stock is allocated right away, so the same products cannot be sold through another sales channel.

### Where to find this

Go to **Settings > Sales channels**, open the sales channel and enable the toggle **Allocate stock while pending**.

The setting is available for Shopify, WooCommerce, Lightspeed and Kaufland. These are the sales channels that can deliver orders with the status **Pending**.

### How it works

As soon as an order on a channel with this setting gets the status **Pending**, ShopLinkr allocates the ordered quantities. Allocated stock is subtracted from the quantity ShopLinkr offers to your sales channels. This applies to all your sales channels, not just the channel the order came from.

Your available stock in the warehouse does not change: the products are still there and are not reserved yet. Only the quantity offered on your sales channels goes down.

After that, there are two possibilities:

- The order moves on to **Open**, for example once the payment is completed. The allocation is then converted into a regular reservation and you process the order as usual. If there is not enough stock at that moment, the order gets the status [**Backorder**](/en/support/backorders).

- The order is cancelled. The allocated stock is released immediately and the quantity offered on your sales channels goes back up.

### Allocated vs reserved

Allocated stock is not the same as reserved stock. A reservation is a hard claim for an order you are going to process: that stock no longer counts as available. An allocation is a soft claim: the products stay within your available stock, they are just no longer offered on your sales channels.

|                               | Allocated                                                       | Reserved                             |
| ----------------------------- | --------------------------------------------------------------- | ------------------------------------ |
| **When**                      | Order is **Pending**                                            | Order is **Open** or being processed |
| **Available stock**           | Stays the same, the allocation sits within your available stock | No longer counts as available        |
| **Offered on sales channels** | Offered quantity goes down                                      | Offered quantity goes down           |

An order that reaches **Open** also takes priority over allocated stock. Reservations always come first. If that leaves too little stock for an order that is still pending, the allocation goes down with it and that order gets the status **Backorder** when it opens.

### What you see in ShopLinkr

- On the order page, an order with the status **Pending** shows the allocated quantity per line.

- On the product page, the available stock shows how many of those units are allocated.

- On the product page, each connected sales channel shows the quantity offered on that channel.

### Good to know

- Working with [stock sources](/en/support/stock-sources)? Allocation a linked product cannot cover from its own stock is allocated on the main product.

- ShopLinkr never allocates more than your available stock. If your stock goes down, the allocation goes down with it.

- Orders that are fulfilled by the sales channel itself do not allocate stock.

Want to know more about the statuses an order goes through? Read [how the order flow works](/en/support/how-does-the-order-flow-work).

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Bron: https://www.shoplinkr.com/en/support/allocate-stock