Set how often it checks

Each supplier has its own schedule, on its own settings screen. Pick an interval, save, and that is the whole job. New suppliers start on Hourly.

The intervals

Interval	Use it when
Every 15 minutes	Stock moves fast and your supplier publishes that often. The fastest offered.
Hourly	The usual answer, and the default.
Every 4 hours	Your supplier rebuilds their file a few times a day.
Twice a day	A morning and an afternoon file.
Once a day	An overnight export.
Off. I will check it myself	Nothing runs. Every figure stays exactly where it is.

Why nothing goes below 15 minutes

Because several wholesalers cap downloads at that, and offering “every 5 minutes” to somebody whose supplier will refuse it is offering them a broken setting.

Some suppliers set their own floor and StockBoss respects it. PenCarrie allow one update every 15 minutes, Prestige Leisure one an hour. Intervals a supplier will not answer at are simply not offered for them. A run that would still arrive early is skipped rather than sent, and the history records it as skipped.

Prestige starts at Hourly

Prestige Leisure's own limit is one update an hour, so the faster intervals are simply not offered for them: their list starts at Hourly.

Check now respects the floor too. It runs the supplier immediately in every other sense, but it will not ask a supplier sooner than that supplier allows.

How fresh your figures actually are

Two numbers, not one, and it is worth being straight about which is which.

Your supplier decides how fresh their number is. If they rebuild their file once an hour, that is the best anyone can do with it. Checking every fifteen minutes just gets the same answer four times.

Your interval decides how much staleness gets added on top. On a 15 minute schedule your shop is never more than 15 minutes behind whatever your supplier last published.

So StockBoss adds minutes; it does not make your supplier’s numbers live. Nobody can be fresher than the wholesaler.

The range has its own clock

The intervals above are for stock figures. The supplier’s range, the catalogue of styles and colours, changes far more slowly. So it is re-read once a day, in the small hours, one supplier at a time. You do not set anything for this.

What the re-read finds goes to the right screen: new products and colours to the Catalogue, products the supplier no longer lists to Needs you. A range you uploaded as a file is not re-read, because re-reading an unchanged upload would stamp it fresh while it quietly ages.

Off is a pause

Off stops the schedule and leaves every figure exactly where it is. Nothing is undone, nothing is handed back.

It is there for the week your supplier is having trouble, or while a token cannot be replaced until Monday. A paused supplier says Paused in its own quiet colour rather than sitting there looking healthy.

If you want your own numbers back rather than a pause, that is a different button. See Pause or stop a supplier.

If the schedule itself stops

WordPress runs scheduled jobs when somebody visits the site, so a very quiet shop can queue them. On a WooCommerce store this is usually handled by WooCommerce’s own scheduler, which StockBoss uses where it exists.

You are told when that happens. StockBoss watches the clock as well as the supplier. It emails you when a supplier is not being asked at all, because that is a different failure from a supplier answering badly:

• Not booked in. Nothing is scheduled, so it will not fix itself. Open the supplier’s settings and save them again to book it back in.
• Booked but overdue. Scheduled, but the last attempt was far longer ago than you asked for, which usually means WordPress’s timer has stopped on a quiet site. Worth a word with your host.

You hear once when it stops and once when it is back, never nightly. See Health, history and alerts.