Item Quantity Rules

 

Quantity rules in the PIM allow you to set minimum and maximum quantities, as well as set up Purchase Multiples which determines what QTY of an item must be purchased at a time. These tools are helpful for a variety of reasons, such as enforcing a minimum amount of a product be ordered per cart, ensuring that only so many of an item may be purchased at one time or within a specific time frame, and only allowing items to be purchased in quantities that match up with case or package sizes. See below for more information and examples of how these tools can be used.

The PIM will attempt to prevent you from making a scenario that would make an item unpurchaseable but it will not stop you. There are scenarios that you can create that would prevent an item from being able to be added to a cart. Making the Minimum Quantity larger than the Maximum Quantity would be one such example.

Adding Values to the PIM

As you can see in the image above, when viewing an item there is a tab in the right-most pane named Quantity Rules. Three fields make up Quantity Rules:


  • Minimum and Maximum Quantity: The usage of these depends somewhat on how you configure the relevant settings on your site which we will go over below.

  • Purchase Multiples: This field requires no additional configuration on the site side. When you enter a number into this field, the site will only let this item be purchased in multiples of this number. This does a few things, first, some text is added to the item that says "Order multiples of X EA" where X is the number specified in your Purchase Multiple field for your item (in this example, 5). Also, when trying to purchase the item S-QC-1200-12-12 on the site with any qty that isn't a multiple of 5 (5,10,15,20, etc.) the action will result in a warning that alerts the user of the requirement and rounds the qty to the nearest multiple value, rounding up. See below for examples of both of these scenarios in action. 

Minimum/Maximum and Site Settings

When a minimum and/or maximum quantity are set in the PIM for items, the behavior is determined by the above settings found in your site settings under Shopping > Cart. 


  • Per Item - This option will likely only be used in niche scenarios, it prevents an amount below the minimum quantity or above the maximum quantity from being added to the cart at one time. This will not prevent users from going over the maximum or even adjusting the minimum in their cart.

  • Per Cart - This option limits the quantity of an item to the range specified in the PIM in the cart. For example, if you had an item with a minimum of 5 items and a user attempted to add 4 of the items to their cart or adjust their cart to a lower amount, they would receive an error that at least 5 items must be added to the cart to continue. Conversely, if the maximum is set to 20 and the user tries to add items or adjust their cart in such a way that would put the number of the items over 20, an error is received that the maximum qty allowed is 20. 


  • Per Cart (Over Time Period) - This setting is used in conjunction with the "Max/Min Qty Time Period (Days)" setting that neighbors it. The usage of these settings is to prevent a qty greater than the max quantity from being ordered over some time per user. For example, if you have an item that is set to a maximum quantity of 10 and a "Max/Min Qty Time Period (Days)" of 5 days, the user can order up to 10 qty of the item over 5 days, but will then be locked out until the time elapses. 

Some additional notes about the time period option can be helpful to know. 

First, this is a rolling time period, so if the user placed an order at the beginning of a 7-day period for only part of the maximum amount, and then hit the maximum amount on the 7th day, they would not need to wait 7 days from the last day they placed an order to order the item again. If they placed half of the maximum quantity on day 1, and the other half on day 7, then once 7 days pass from the first day half of the maximum could once again be ordered.

Secondly, the time period is NOT specific to the exact time the order was placed. Instead, the qty ordered will drop off at 11:59 pm X days after the order was placed per your "Max/Min Qty Time Period (Days)" setting. For example, if an item has a maximum qty of 10 and an order is placed on Monday for 10 items with a 7-day period, the user will not be able to order 10 more of the item on the next Monday 7 days later. The previous number of items ordered will not drop off until 11:59 pm of that Monday effectively making Tuesday the orderable date. If you intend to allow weekly orders, you would want to use a 6-day period instead. 

As anonymous users are not tracked by the site, there is no way to use the Per Cart (Over Time Period) option with anonymous shopping. 

Purchase Multiples and Min/Max

Purchase Multiples and Min/Max Qty do work in tandem. If an item has a minimum and maximum quantity but also has purchase multiples then the purchase multiples will still work as expected, albeit constrained to the range set by the minimum and maximum qty for applicable items. A purchase multiple number cannot be greater than the maximum quantity of an item and be a valid scenario as you would never be able to add that amount of items to your cart. 

Common Scenario Examples

Customers can order as many of the items as they want, but can only order X amount per order. 

Set the site to check quantities Per Cart in the site settings, and set the Maximum Quantity in the PIM to the number you desire to be the maximum per order. 

Customers can only order X amount of items per week
Set the site to check quantities "Per Cart (Over Time Period)" and set the "Max/Min Qty Time Period (Days)" setting to 6 days if you want a user to be able to place the amount each Monday for instance. Also, make sure to add the appropriate qty to the Maximum value of the PIM.

Customers must order at least X amount of items with no maximum

Set the site to check quantities Per Cart in the site settings, and set only a minimum value in the PIM that they must order over.

Customers must order in multiples of X at a time to prevent breaking packages apart

No site setting configuration is required, simply add the qty of multiples that the item must be purchased in into the Purchase Multiples field in the PIM. 

These are the most common scenarios for these tools, but if you run into a scenario that seems possible you are having trouble with reach out to Aldrich Support for more information.