Alternate Products Not Triggered for Special Order and eCommerce Transactions

Problem Statement

The customer had correctly configured the Alternate Products feature in iVend Retail 6.6 — including defining base items and alternate items with match factors in SAP Business One, verifying synchronization to iVend, and enabling the Negative Inventory Resolution Screen in the Retail Profile. While the alternate product prompt functioned correctly during standard POS Sales transactions, the customer found that the same functionality did not trigger during Special Order transactions at the POS, nor was it available for eCommerce order processing. The customer sought to extend the Alternate Products feature across all transaction types to manage out-of-stock scenarios consistently across sales channels. After investigation, it was confirmed that this is a product design limitation: Alternate Products functionality is supported exclusively for Sales transactions and is not applicable to Order-type transactions.

Symptoms

• During a standard POS Sales transaction, scanning an out-of-stock item correctly triggers the Negative Inventory Resolution screen, allowing the cashier to select a configured alternate product. (This behaviour is working as designed.)

• During a Special Order transaction at the POS, adding a non-stock or out-of-stock item does NOT trigger the Negative Inventory Resolution screen — the alternate product is not presented to the cashier.

• eCommerce orders placed for out-of-stock items do not display or substitute configured alternate products.

• No error message is displayed in either scenario; the system silently proceeds without prompting for an alternate item.

• The issue is consistently reproducible: it occurs every time a Special Order or eCommerce order is placed for an out-of-stock item, regardless of the alternate product configuration in SAP B1 and iVend.

Recommendations / Suggestions

• Product design limitation — Alternate Products / Negative Inventory Resolution is supported ONLY for Sales transactions in iVend Retail 6.6. It will not trigger for Special Order transactions or eCommerce orders, by design. There is no configuration change that will enable it for these transaction types.

• For eCommerce and Special Order scenarios, manage out-of-stock situations outside of the Alternate Products feature — for example, by maintaining adequate stock levels, using SAP B1's back-order and purchase order workflows, or implementing stock replenishment alerts.