# What shoppers see - Stockpool 1.x documentation

> The shared quantity on product pages, the cart limits across products, checkout holds, hidden out of stock products and backorders.

Once a product uses a pool, everything WooCommerce shows about its stock comes from the pool.

![A hoodie and a tee sharing one roll of navy fabric](https://storage.extendiment.com/media/1066/screenshot-1.png)

## The stock line and the quantity field

The stock line follows your store's **Stock display format** (WooCommerce → Settings → Products → Inventory):

- *Always show quantity remaining*: "3 in stock"
- *Only show quantity remaining in stock when low*: "Only 2 left in stock" at or below the low stock amount
- *Never show quantity remaining*: "In stock"

The number is how many of *this product* the pools can cover. With 7.5 m of fabric, a hoodie that uses 2 m shows "3 in stock" and a tee that uses 1.2 m shows "6 in stock". The quantity field stops at the same number.

On a variable product, the line changes as shoppers pick options, following each variation's pools.

## The cart counts every product in the pool

Two different products can share a pool, so Stockpool adds up every cart line that uses it. With 5 m of linen, a shopper can add two scarves at 2 m each, and then only one hat at 1 m: "You cannot add that amount to the cart because there is not enough stock (1 remaining)".

The same check runs when quantities change in the cart and once more before checkout, in the classic cart and checkout and in the cart and checkout blocks. In the cart block, a quantity raised too far is refused right away from WooCommerce 11.2; with older WooCommerce it is stopped at checkout instead.

## Checkout holds the stock while the customer pays

When a shopper places an order, Stockpool holds the pools' stock for it, the way WooCommerce holds its own stock, for the **Hold stock (minutes)** set in WooCommerce's inventory settings. A second shopper can't buy the last of a pool someone is paying for; they're told someone may have just bought it. The hold ends when the order is paid, put on hold, completed or cancelled, or when it expires.

If **Hold stock** is empty, there's no hold, as in WooCommerce.

## Out of stock products

A product is out of stock as soon as one of its pools (without backorders) can't cover a single item. Out of stock products:

- show "Out of stock" and can't be added to the cart,
- are hidden from the shop when **Hide out of stock items from the catalog** is on,
- are filtered out by WooCommerce's stock filters,
- make their variable product out of stock once every variation is.

When stock comes back, they come back too.

## Backorders

A pool set to **Take backorders and tell customers** keeps its products buyable when it runs out and shows "Available on backorder"; WooCommerce marks the order item as backordered. **Take backorders quietly** does the same without the notice. A pool that allows backorders never limits the cart.

A product with several pools is out of stock if any pool that stops selling runs out, even when another allows backorders.

Source: https://extendiment.com/plugins/stockpool/docs/1.x/what-shoppers-see