Consumer commerce mostly treats out of stock as a dead end. Hide the product, or offer a notify-me. Distribution does not work that way. A buyer with a standing relationship expects to place the line now, keep their place in the queue, and receive the goods when the container lands.
Supporting that properly means the storefront has to let a customer buy past zero, show an expected date that comes from the purchase order in the ERP rather than from a guess, and pass the line through as a backorder the ERP recognizes. It also means partial shipments, because the rest of the order should not wait.
Whether you can do this cleanly depends on both the platform and the connector. Selling past zero is usually a checkbox. Getting a credible date onto the page, and getting the resulting order to behave as a backorder in the ERP rather than as an ordinary order with a line nobody can fill, is where the work is.
Why it decides a platform
Sellers who cannot backorder online push their largest and most predictable orders back onto the phone. That is the opposite of the reason the project was funded.
Also called: backorders, back order, back-order, backordered, selling past zero.
Last updated 2026-08-20.