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Metrics type: Cross-Platform Metrics • Category: Ecommerce Platform
SKUs that are out of stock on OpenCart but still live and sellable on a connected marketplace. Direct oversell risk: a customer can buy something you cannot fulfil.

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At a glance

A cross-connector view that joins your OpenCart stock levels with a connected marketplace’s (for example Amazon) listing status. It flags SKUs that read out of stock in OpenCart but are still active and buyable on the marketplace. That gap is an oversell waiting to happen: a marketplace shopper places an order you cannot fulfil, which triggers cancellations, refunds, and on Amazon, account-health penalties. OpenCart has no native marketplace integration, so this card only populates when a marketplace connector is linked, and the join is keyed on SKU or model.

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Calculation

Calculated automatically from your OpenCart data joined with the connected channel. See the At a glance summary above for what the metric tracks and the worked example below for a typical reading.

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Worked example

A UK kitchenware merchant on OpenCart 3.x selling the same catalogue on Amazon via a connected Amazon Selling Partner account. OpenCart is the inventory master; Amazon listings are meant to follow it. Snapshot taken 13 Apr 26. What’s interesting here:
  1. Two confirmed oversell risks are live right now. KW-CHEF-08 and KW-PAN-26 are out of stock on OpenCart but still buyable on Amazon. Every hour they stay that way is an hour an Amazon shopper can place an order you cannot ship. On Amazon specifically, an unfulfillable order damages your account health, not just that one sale.
  2. The card is below its alert floor, but only just. With 2 confirmed SKUs the >5 alert is not firing yet. That is the moment to fix it, before a slow inventory-sync day pushes the count past the threshold and turns a quiet problem into a flood of cancellations.
  3. The unmatched SKU is the dangerous one. KW-MUG-SET is out of stock on OpenCart and active on Amazon, but because it has no SKU or model on OpenCart, the join cannot confirm it. It is an oversell risk the card cannot see. Fixing Products Missing SKU / Model is what makes this card trustworthy.
  4. The healthy rows prove the sync usually works. KW-BOARD-L went out of stock on OpenCart and the Amazon listing correctly followed it down. That is the intended behaviour; the flagged rows are where the sync lagged or failed.
Action priority order:
  1. Push the two flagged SKUs to inactive on the marketplace immediately, or set marketplace quantity to zero, until OpenCart stock recovers.
  2. Investigate the sync lag. If OpenCart went to zero hours ago and Amazon is still live, the inventory feed to Amazon is delayed or broken. Fix the feed cadence, not just these two SKUs.
  3. Resolve the unmatched SKU by adding a SKU or model to KW-MUG-SET on OpenCart so the join can see it next sync.
  4. Confirm restock dates. For SKUs restocking soon, marketplace preorder or back-order handling may be preferable to deactivating the listing entirely.

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Sibling cards merchants should reference together

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Reconciling against OpenCart

Where to look in OpenCart admin: OpenCart can show you the stock half but not the marketplace half. Catalog → Products shows the quantity per product; Reports → Products → Products Viewed and the stock columns help you see what is at zero. The underlying data is the quantity, sku, and model columns on oc_product, plus the out-of-stock setting under System → Settings. Marketplace listing status lives entirely in the connected marketplace account, OpenCart has no native marketplace integration, so the listing half is supplied by the Amazon connector. Other OpenCart views that look relevant but cannot answer this:
  • Catalog → Products quantity column: shows OpenCart stock, says nothing about whether the marketplace listing is live.
  • The storefront “out of stock” label: governs your own store, not Amazon.
  • An inventory export: snapshots OpenCart stock at a point in time, with no marketplace status.
Why our number may legitimately differ from a manual cross-check: Cross-connector reconciliation (OpenCart stock joined with a connected marketplace):

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Known limitations / merchant FAQs

Why is this card empty? Usually because no marketplace connector is linked. OpenCart has no native marketplace integration, so the listing half of the join comes from a connected marketplace (for example Amazon). Without it, the card has nothing to compare your stock against. A SKU is at zero on OpenCart but I use Amazon FBA for it, is that a real risk? Not necessarily. If Amazon holds its own fulfilment stock, the listing can be legitimately live while OpenCart shows zero, because OpenCart is tracking your seller-fulfilled stock, not Amazon’s warehouse. Treat FBA SKUs as expected exceptions and focus on seller-fulfilled SKUs. Why are some out-of-stock SKUs not flagged? Most often because they cannot be matched. A product without a SKU or model on OpenCart cannot be joined to the marketplace listing, so it is reported as unmatched rather than flagged. Fix Products Missing SKU / Model to close that blind spot. How fast does this update after a stock-out? OpenCart stock is real time, but the marketplace listing status reflects the last connector poll (typically within 24 hours, often faster). A SKU that just went OOS may take a sync cycle to appear as a flagged pair. What should I do the moment a SKU is flagged? Take the marketplace listing down or set its marketplace quantity to zero until OpenCart stock recovers. That removes the oversell risk immediately. Then investigate why the inventory feed let the gap open in the first place. Does OpenCart’s “allow checkout on out of stock” setting affect this? It can. If OpenCart is configured to allow purchases when stock is zero, the OOS definition softens, and a SKU that is technically zero may still be sellable on both sides. The card respects your stock-checkout configuration. My SKUs are matched at product level but Amazon lists variants, why the mismatch? OpenCart tracks stock at product level (with option-level adjustments via extensions), while a marketplace may list each variant separately. The join matches on the identifier you provide; if your variants need separate marketplace stock, ensure each carries a distinct SKU.

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Tracked live in Vortex IQ Nerve Centre

OpenCart Inventory vs Marketplace Listings is one of hundreds of KPI pulses Vortex IQ tracks across OpenCart and 70+ other ecommerce connectors. Nerve Centre runs the detection layer; Vortex Mind investigates the cause when something moves; Ask Viq lets you interrogate any number in plain English. Start for free or book a demo to see this metric running on your own data.