Stock Management Problem

When using a manual payment method, wp-ecommerce reserves the stock item giving the message: “1 of them is reserved for pending or recently completed orders”. But once the time period for saving items in a users cart has been reached, the reservation is cancelled.

This is fine for users who put items in their cart and then do nothing, but for someone who has purchased the item using a manual method, the stock should continue to be reserved until I accept their payment or alternatively, the stock should be reduced at the time of the purchase, even though it is not yet paid for. I could then easily reinstate the stock manually if the payment is not successfully completed.

As I only have one of most items I sell, the existing logic allows the releases of a purchased item back for sale. It could then be bought by someone else. This could leave me in a position where I receive the first customers manual payment, only to find that their item has already been purchased by someone else!

I could set the “keep stock in cart for” to something like 15 days in the hope that I receive the payment and it clears within this time frame, but for customers that put an item in their cart and then leave the site and don’t return, that item is unavailable for sale for 15 days! This is too long to have stock out of action.

Have I missed some type of configuration? Is there any way I can control this situation?

Thanks

Phil

https://wordpress.org/plugins/wp-e-commerce/