Reserving Products for Customers

To ensure that your customers are able to complete their checkout during or after your livestream, SHOPLINE introduces the Reserved products feature. When customers place orders through the livestream, the system locks the inventory and reserves the products until the specified time. Customers can confidently keep shopping and checkout later.

This feature is available to merchants streaming through Facebook and Instagram with the settlement mode being both Only draft order and Only Shopping cart settlement mode.

Reserving Products under Only Draft Order Mode

Enabling Product Reservation

This feature is turned off by default. Follow the steps below to turn it on if needed.

1. From your SHOPLINE admin panel, go to Channels > Live Shopping from the left pane.
2. Click Create livestream.
   
3. In the Basic settings section of the details page, go to the Order settings tab. Select the Only draft order settlement mode and turn on the Reserved products toggle. When enabled, the system will generate a default ending time for product reservation that is seven days from the current time. You can modify the duration as needed.
   

Checking the Quantity of Reserved Products

In the livestream studio, you can view how many products are reserved in your inventory during or after the livestream.

• In the middle pane of the Livestream tab, switch to the Products to sell in the live stream tab and examine the data.
  
• Examine the data in the Products sales tab.
  

Reserving Products under Only Shopping Cart Mode

We will show you how to enable product reservation, then explain in detail what will happen to the inventory when you or customers edit their cart or check out.

Enabling Product Reservation

This feature is turned off by default. Follow the steps below to turn it on if needed.

3. From your SHOPLINE admin panel, go to Channels > Live Shopping from the left pane.
4. Click Create livestream.
   
5. In the Basic settings section of the details page, go to the Order settings tab. Select the Only shopping cart settlement mode and turn on the Reserved products toggle. When enabled, the system will generate a default ending time for product reservation that is seven days from the current time. You can modify the duration as needed.
   

When Customers Edit Their Cart

If you select the Only shopping cart settlement mode for the livestream, customers will see the ending time for reserved products in their cart after placing an order during your livestream. The time displayed on the cart page is based on the time zone set for your store, and won’t disappear when it expires.

The following logic applies when customers edit their cart:

• Before the ending time is reached, customers can edit the reserved products. Increasing items will increase the reserved quantity, while decreasing or deleting items will release the reserved inventory. Please note that the action is not reversible once the reserved inventory is released.
• When the ending time is reached, the system will release the reserved inventory for items that haven’t been checked out. By then, even if the customers edit their cart and increase the quantity, the products won’t be reserved.
• Products that the customers add to their cart from your online store won’t be reserved. In the case that the product added during the livestream and from the online store is the same, the customer’s cart will display two rows for this product.

When Customers Check Out

Customers check out their livestream cart the same way as they do for a regular shopping cart. After checkout, the inventory won’t be deducted for the second time.

However, if customers click the CHECK OUT button in the cart and enter the checkout page without completing the process, their ability to edit the cart will be restricted when returning to the cart. The logic will be different once the customer goes from the cart to the checkout page. Detailed explanations are as follows:

• Before the ending time is reached, customers are not able to edit the product quantities. Deleting products is allowed, but the reserved inventory won’t be released until the ending time is reached. 
• When the ending time is reached, the system will release the reserved inventory for items that haven’t been checked out. By then, customers can edit their cart.
• Products that the customers add to their cart from your online store can be edited.
  
  

When You Edit the Cart for Customers

You can edit the cart for customers. In the livestream studio, switch to the Message Management tab. Then, find the customer whose cart you want to edit and click the  shopping cart icon from the Operate column to make edits. The reservation logic is explained below:

• Before the ending time is reached, you can edit the reserved products for customers. Increasing the quantity will increase the reserved inventory, while decreasing or deleting items will release the reserved inventory.
• As long as the inventory reservation is enabled for your livestream and the ending time isn’t reached, you can add other products to the customers’ cart, and that product’s inventory will be reserved. It is not limited to the products you selected for the livestream; it can be any product of your store.
• If customers have entered the checkout page, editing their cart will be restricted, following the same logic when customers check out themselves. See the previous section.

Limitations

• Viewing reserved quantities is not supported in the livestream studio at this moment. Please go to Products > Inventory and check the Unavailable column.
  
• Inventory reservation is currently not compatible with flash sales campaigns. Let’s say you use the Flash Sales app and set a maximum of 3 product A that customers can buy. When a customer calls “A1+4” in the livestream, the system will reserve 4 product A. However, when the customer enters the shopping cart to checkout, the system restricts the sale of only 3 items. As an alternative, you can set up Product purchase limit in Live Shopping > General setting > Keywords and Order Rules.
• Inventory reservation is currently not compatible with apps like B2B & Wholesale Solution, Flash Sales, and Product Option Customizer & Product Bundler.