How to Bulk Enable or Disable WooCommerce Backorders

Are you looking for a fast way to manage out-of-stock products in your store? In this comprehensive tutorial, we will show you how to bulk enable or disable WooCommerce backorders.

Managing inventory can be a challenge. When products run out of stock, you have to decide whether to stop selling them or allow customers to keep buying them with the promise of future delivery. If you have hundreds of items, changing these settings one by one is incredibly time-consuming. Here, you’ll learn how to bulk enable backorders, bulk disable them, and streamline your WooCommerce inventory management.

What are WooCommerce backorders?

Backorders are orders for products that are currently out of stock. When a customer places an order for a backordered product on your WooCommerce store, you agree to ship the product once your inventory is replenished and the item becomes available again.

We know it can be difficult to manage backorder stock settings for hundreds of products manually, especially if you need to update seasonal items or respond to supply chain delays quickly.

This tutorial will guide you to bulk edit backorder settings for hundreds of products at once.

We’ll do it using the WP Sheet Editor plugin, which allows you to view and manage WooCommerce products using a lightning-fast spreadsheet interface.

Install the WP Sheet Editor Plugin

You can skip this step if you already have the plugin installed and activated.

After installing the plugin, go to WP Sheet Editor > Edit Products to open the WooCommerce products spreadsheet.

You will see a spreadsheet that contains all your products with all their data.

1. Enable or disable WooCommerce backorders in the spreadsheet

If you only want to change the backorder status of some specific products, you can do it directly in the spreadsheet grid without opening individual product pages.

1. Locate the Stock status column and select the On Backorder option.
2. Move to the Manage stock column and tick the checkbox.
3. Move to the Stock column and enter 0.
4. Move to the Backorders allowed column and select any of these options:
   • Do not allow
   • Allow, but notify customer
   • Allow

You can apply this to as many products as you want by navigating the rows, making this a great way to manually update the backorder settings for multiple products quickly.

Once you’re done applying the changes, click on the Save button on the top toolbar.

2. How to bulk enable or disable WooCommerce backorders

If you want to allow or disable WooCommerce backorders for your entire catalog or specific categories at once, you can use the Bulk Edit tool. Follow these steps:

Step 1: Filter all out-of-stock products (optional)

If you want to change all the out-of-stock products to the stock status on backorder, you can filter these products first using the Search tool.

The Search tool will give you the option to filter by different parameters, but in this case, select these values:

• Tick the Enable the advanced filters checkbox
• Field: Stock status
• Operator: =
• Value: Out of stock
• Click on Run search.

Once filtered, only the out-of-stock products will be displayed in the spreadsheet.

Step 2: Clear the product stock

In case you’re not working exclusively with out-of-stock products, you’ll need to empty the stock quantities to be able to properly handle your products on backorder.

Once you have isolated the products you want to edit, open the Bulk Edit tool.

Then, you will need to change the product stocks to zero (0) by entering these values:

• Select the rows that you want to update: Edit all the rows from my current search (Even non-visible rows).
• What field do you want to update: Stock
• Select type of edit: Clear value
• Click on Execute now.

This will instantly clear the values in the Stock field for all selected items.

Step 3: Enable or disable WooCommerce backorders in bulk

Now we will configure the backorder permissions for all these products simultaneously.

Open the Bulk Edit tool again.

Enter these values to enable or disable the backorders in bulk:

• Select the rows that you want to update: Edit all the rows from my current search (Even non-visible rows).
• What field do you want to update: Backorders allowed?
• Select type of edit: Set value
• Replace existing value with this value: You can select any of these options based on your store’s policy:
  • Do not allow
  • Allow, but notify customer
  • Allow
• Click on Execute now.

Step 4: Change the stock status to “On backorder”

Finally, open the Bulk Edit tool one last time to officially change the stock status label to “On backorder”:

• Select the rows that you want to update: Edit all the rows from my current search (Even non-visible rows).
• What field do you want to update: Stock status
• Select type of edit: Set value
• Replace existing value with this value: Select On backorder
• Click on Execute now.

Once these bulk edits are finished, you’ll see that all the targeted products’ stock status is now actively set to On backorder.

Optional: Filter “On Backorder” products in WooCommerce

If you want to edit other fields specifically for products that have the stock status on backorder, you can filter them out easily using the Search tool.

The Search tool will give you the option to filter by different inventory parameters. Enter these values:

• Tick the Enable the advanced filters checkbox
• Field: Stock status
• Operator: =
• Value: On backorder
• Click on Run search.

Once you run the search, all the products with the stock status “on backorder” will be displayed in the spreadsheet, allowing you to run further bulk edits on them.

Optional: Prepend stock status to WooCommerce product titles

One clever strategy you can use to give upfront visibility to your customers regarding inventory is to add the stock status directly at the beginning of the product title.

For this, you will need to open the Bulk Edit tool.

Once open, you can enter these values:

• Select the rows that you want to update: Edit all the rows from my current search (Even non-visible rows).
• What field do you want to update: Title
• Select type of edit: Prepend
• Replace existing value with this value: Enter the column key $_stock_status$ or, if you have previously filtered your “on backorder” products, you can simply write “[On backorder]”. In any case, be sure to add a blank space after this value so it reads cleanly.
• Click on Execute now.

Important: If you use the column key, the text in the title won’t automatically update in the future if the stock status changes. You would need to run a search and replace to remove it later.

After the bulk update has finished, you’ll see the stock status seamlessly added to your product names.

Optional: Add a purchase note for all backordered products

One of the most difficult issues with backorders is properly communicating the lead time to customers.

If this is not done correctly, customers can become frustrated, resulting in negative reviews and support tickets requesting refunds.

To solve this, you can add a WooCommerce purchase note on all products with the stock status “on backorder“. This allows you to inform your customers via email of an estimated delivery time or the process that will be followed to fulfill the order.

This will be done using the Bulk Edit tool.

In the tool, select these values:

• Select the rows that you want to update: Edit all the rows from my current search (Even non-visible rows).
• What field do you want to update: Purchase note
• Select type of edit: Set value
• Replace existing value with this value: Add your custom note with a disclosure of the estimated time or procedure for the backordered item.
• Click on Execute now.

Once done, the purchase note will be added to all your selected backorder products instantly.

Optional: Search for products ordered on backorder

Backorder management can make overall inventory management difficult.

Backordered items need to be tracked carefully, which usually leads to an increase in administrative work because store managers must monitor and fulfill these orders separately, which can be time-consuming.

However, you can easily filter out all products that are currently pending fulfillment on backorder using the Search tool.

Once in the Search tool, you’ll see different parameters to make your search. Enable the advanced filters and enter these parameters to find negative stock levels:

• Field: Stock
• Operator: Contains
• Value: Enter the minus sign (-)
• Click on Run search.

After running this search, you’ll see all the products that have negative stock, meaning they have been requested to be delivered and are actively waiting on backorder.

This is how WP Sheet Editor allows you to enable or disable WooCommerce backorders in bulk. You can save hours of administrative time, improve your inventory control, and increase your store’s productivity.