How Variant stock works during checkout

When stock is assigned

On Easol, stock is assigned to a customer after they have clicked the Pay button during checkout. The Pay button appears after the customer has filled in any fields during checkout and filled in their credit card/payment details. Clicking the Pay button prompts the payment process to begin and the stock to be assigned.

Stock is assigned to the customer for a 15-minute period after they click the Pay button during checkout. The 15-minute time period is to prevent stock from being held indefinitely for customers, while also allowing enough time for the customer to complete their payment. During this period, Easol is communicating with the 3rd party payment platform or bank to verify and complete the payment. A few examples of this verification could be:

• Easol processing the bank transfer with the customer's bank.
• Easol processing the payment with the credit card processor.
• The customer is completing 3D Secure (3DS), if required by their bank.
• The customer is logging in to their Klarna account to complete payment.

If the customer does not successfully complete any action required on their part during the 15-minute period, or their payment fails for any reason, this prompts the items in their basket to become "stale". A stale cart is a customer's cart that has been in the payment processing period for over 15 minutes. Once the cart becomes stale, the stock is released and no longer assigned to that customer.

When stock is booked

If all the stock of a Variant is fully booked, it is not removed from other customer's carts. However, customers can no longer pay for that Variant stock or add any more of that Variant stock to their cart.

This is because the assigned stock hasn't successfully been paid for yet and other customers may still be in the 15-minute pay period which holds the stock. There is the possibility that the customer doesn't complete payment causing the time to run out, or the payment fails with the bank, which would release the stock for other customers to purchase it who might have that item in their cart.

When stock is sold out

A Variant is sold out when all its stock has been successfully paid for. Customers will not be able to add any more of these items to their cart. If a customer has the sold out Variant in their cart, the system will automatically remove it, preventing the Variant from being oversold.