The three numbers
Stock in the sidebar lists every variant with three figures.
| Number | What it is |
|---|---|
| On hand | What is physically in the building. It moves when goods arrive, when goods are dispatched, and when somebody counts. |
| Promised | Sold and not yet dispatched. Spoken for, and still on the shelf. |
| Available | On hand minus promised. This is the number sent to your channels. |
A sale does not reduce on hand, because the goods are still there. Selling one of fifty makes it 50 on hand, 1 promised, 49 available. On hand becomes 49 when the parcel goes, and promised drops back to 0 at the same moment.
An order promises stock only once it has been allocated. Before that it is an order this system knows about that has reserved nothing, and all three numbers stay where they were.
Correcting a count
- Find the variant on the Stock screen, or open its product.
- Press Adjust.
- Say what you are doing: counting what is there, which sets the number, or adding or removing, which changes it by an amount and takes a minus sign.
- Give a reason: correction, stocktake, delivery arrived, customer return, or fixing a mistake.
- Add a note if there is anything to say. Whoever reads it in three months will be grateful.
- Save. The new figures are confirmed on screen.
Adjusting changes on hand only. Promised is moved by orders and dispatches and is never typed in, so a correction here cannot take back something already sold.
Why a number is what it is
Why? beside a variant opens every movement, newest first: when, what changed, what was left, the reason and who did it. The last line is the number on the screen. Automatic movements - an allocation, a dispatch, a return - say so rather than naming a person.
Warehouses and bins
Stock lives in a warehouse. Settings › Warehouses holds them, each with a short code that is printed on picking lists and cannot be changed afterwards, a name, a telephone number a carrier can ring, and an address.
A warehouse needs a street and a postcode before a marketplace or a carrier will accept it as somewhere to ship from. One warehouse is the default, which is where an import counts stock in and what a new product uses.
Inside a warehouse are locations: an aisle, a bay, a shelf, in whatever words the building already uses. A pick list is ordered by them, so the walk is short and the same every time.
Warehouses are archived rather than deleted, and the default one cannot be archived at all. Nothing is lost: the stock, the address and everything that has moved through it are kept, and Bring it back reverses it. A ledger has to keep adding up.
How much each channel is told
By default a channel is told exactly what is available. The Stock tab on a connection changes that, without changing your stock or what any other channel is told.
Each rule is a when and a send:
| When | Send |
|---|---|
| everything, or the SKU starts with, ends with or contains something, or the product is tagged | a share of it - one in two, one in three; all but a number, which is how a buffer is held back; at most a number, which caps what a channel is told; or always send a fixed number. |
Rules are read top to bottom: the first that matches decides the number and the rest are not consulted, so put the narrow ones above the general ones. Use the arrows to reorder.
Always send is the only rule that can advertise more than you hold. That is deliberate - it is how a made-to-order line is listed - and it will oversell anything else.
Preview and compare
On the connection's Import and sync tab:
- Preview stock works out exactly what would be sent, with the rules applied, and shows it. Nothing is sent.
- Compare with the store asks the shop what it is currently advertising and lists every SKU where the two disagree. Nothing is changed.
- Send stock pushes. The button carries a count of how many SKUs are waiting.
Every push is recorded with what was sent and what the channel answered, so a disagreement has evidence rather than opinions.
Keeping the channels honest
A sweep re-checks what each channel is advertising against what it should be and corrects what has drifted, which is how a push that was refused while nobody was looking gets repaired. Corrections appear in the job's own report as "store was out of step".