Inventory — setup guide

Inventory has two parts that you switch on separately:

• Stock levels — the numbers you enter yourself (opening stock, purchases, counts). This works from day one.
• Link orders to stock — makes confirmed and shipped orders change those numbers. This is Off by default, so nothing changes in your stock until you turn it on.

You need the stock permission to change anything (adding stock, adjusting counts, tracking mode, reorder points, warehouses, transfers). Without it you can still look at every page.

Products you already created under Products do not appear in the Stock list by themselves. A product shows up only after it has stock. Do this once:

1. Open Inventory → Add stock.
2. For a few products: pick the product, enter quantity and unit cost (what you paid per piece), press Stock in.
3. For many products: use Import opening stock (CSV). One line per item with the columns sku, qty, unit_cost. Use the variant SKU for products that have variants.
4. Press Check only first. It tells you which line has a problem and saves nothing. Press Import when it says the lines look fine. If any line is wrong, nothing is saved — fix it and try again.

Notes: one import can have up to 500 lines. A product that has variants must be stocked per variant (size, colour and so on), never as one total. Enter the real purchase cost — profit reports and the Valuation tab depend on it.

Count what you physically have. In Inventory → Stock, press Adjust on a row, type the counted quantity and pick a reason (stock count correction, damaged, lost, found extra). The system records only the difference, with your reason, so you can always see why a number changed.

Every change is listed under History: who, when, how many and why. Nothing is ever overwritten.

On the Stock tab, under Order stock tracking, choose a mode:

• Off — orders never touch stock.
• Warn only — a new order reserves stock when it is confirmed and deducts it when it is shipped (courier handover). Nothing is ever blocked; if stock is short it is only flagged. Recommended for the first week or two.
• Block when out of stock — same as Warn, but an order cannot be confirmed if available stock is short. Shipping is never blocked, because the parcel is physically leaving.

How it behaves:

• Only orders placed after you switch it on are counted. Older orders are left alone. If you turn it Off and On again, the starting point moves to that moment.
• Reserve on Confirmed / Ready-to-ship. Deduct on Shipped. Cancelled, lost, or moved back to pending/incomplete releases the reservation.
• If an order jumps straight to Delivered without ever being Shipped, the stock is deducted once at that point.
• A returned parcel (RTO) can only put back what that order actually shipped, never more.
• Orders use the default warehouse only (see Step 5).

Before choosing Block when out of stock, make sure every product you sell has stock entered (Step 1). A product that has no stock row at all counts as zero and its orders cannot be confirmed.

On the Stock tab press Reorder on a row and enter a reorder point: the number at which you want to be warned. When available stock (on hand minus reserved, all warehouses together) drops to that number or below, an orange banner appears at the top of Inventory listing the items. You are warned once when it crosses the line, not repeatedly while it stays low.

Leave it empty (or press Remove) for products you do not want to watch. The low-stock list in Analytics uses your reorder point for a product when you set one, and a general default of 5 for the rest.

If you keep stock in more than one place, open Warehouses and add them. Use Make default to choose the one orders draw from. The default warehouse cannot be deactivated, and a warehouse that still holds stock cannot be deactivated either — move the stock out first.

To move goods, press Transfer on a stock row, choose the destination and quantity. Only available stock can move (reserved stock stays), and the goods keep their cost.

Use this when you order goods from a supplier and want stock to go up only when the goods really arrive. Open Inventory → Purchasing.

1. Open Suppliers and add the supplier (name, phone, notes).
2. Press New purchase order, pick the supplier, add the products with quantity and the unit cost you agreed. Save. It starts as Draft.
3. When you place the order with the supplier, open it and press Mark ordered.
4. When goods arrive, open the order and press Receive. Enter how many pieces arrived for each line. Stock goes up by exactly that amount, at the cost on the order.

If only part of the order arrives, receive that part. The order becomes Partial and you can receive the rest later; it becomes Received when every line is complete. You cannot receive more than was ordered — the system refuses it. Use Cancel for an order that will not come, or Close to finish an order with a shortfall you will not wait for.

Notes: receiving goods needs the same permission as adding stock, and creating orders and suppliers needs the purchase permission. Once a draft is saved, its items cannot be edited on screen — cancel it and create a new one. This version does not record supplier bills, payments, tax or currency.

Everything here is optional. If you do not switch a feature on, Inventory works exactly as in Steps 1–6.

• Scan. Press Scan at the top of Inventory. Scan a barcode with a scanner, or type the code and press Enter (the camera button works on devices that allow it). The item opens with its on-hand and available numbers. Choose Count (set exact) or Receive more, then Save and scan the next item. Without the stock permission you can look items up but not change them.

• Send stock to your online store. On the Stock tab, switch on Send my stock to the online store. After each stock change the available quantity (on hand minus reserved) is written to your WooCommerce products, within about 5 minutes. Only products imported from the store are sent, variants are sent one by one, and the store's own stock number is overwritten. Nothing is sent while order tracking is Off or when more than one store is connected. Send all stock now pushes everything once.

• Kits (bundles). In Kits, press New kit, pick the product you sell as a kit and add its components with a quantity each (for example a gift box = 1 mug + 2 coasters). A kit has no stock of its own: Can make now is worked out from the scarcest component. When a kit is ordered, its components are reserved and taken out of stock instead. A kit cannot be stocked in directly. Changing a kit affects only orders placed afterwards.

• Batches and expiry (food, medicine, cosmetics). In Lots & expiry, pick a product and press Turn on lots. Your current stock is put in a lot called OPENING — count it into real lots with Adjust (choose the lot, or New lot). From then on, adding stock or receiving a purchase order asks for a lot number and an optional expiry date. When goods leave, the lot that expires first is used first; lots with no expiry come next and already-expired lots last, so a handover is never blocked. A return goes back into the lots the order was shipped from, and a transfer carries the lot to the other warehouse. The list can be filtered to lots expiring within 30, 60 or 90 days, and a banner appears on Inventory when something has expired or expires within 30 days. You can turn lots off for a product only when its lots are all at zero. A kit cannot be lot-tracked.

• Cost method. Open Valuation and choose Average (default) or FIFO. With FIFO the oldest purchase is used up first, so the cost follows what you actually paid for the units you sell, and Valuation is built from the purchases still on the shelf. When you switch to FIFO, the stock you have now becomes one starting batch at today's average cost. FIFO changes stock value and the cost recorded on stock movements; the profit reports still use the cost saved on each order line. A returned item is costed at the average, not at its original batch.

• Phone alerts. If notifications are on for your account, you get a message when an item falls to its reorder point (Step 4), and a daily message when a lot is about to expire or has expired (once when it enters the 30-day, 7-day and expired stages, not every day).

• Valuation — total value of stock on hand, per item and per warehouse. Value = quantity × the average cost of your recorded purchases (the same figure the COGS lookup uses). It is an average, not the price of the exact remaining pieces (unless you chose FIFO in Step 7).
• If the page says some items have stock but no cost recorded, they are counted at 0. Fix them by stocking in again with the right cost or adding the cost through a stock-in.
• COGS lookup (bottom of the Stock tab) — pick a product and quantity to see what that quantity costs you.

• "My product is not in the Stock list." It has no stock yet. Add stock (Step 1).
• "this product has variants - choose one" Select the size/colour variant, not the parent product.
• "Insufficient stock" when confirming an order. Mode is Block when out of stock and available is less than the order needs. Add stock, or switch to Warn only.
• "My old orders did not change stock." Correct — only orders placed after tracking was switched on are counted.
• Numbers drifted from reality. Count the shelf and use Adjust with a reason; do not edit anything else.
• I cannot see the buttons. Your role needs the stock permission; ask the account owner.
• "It asks for a lot number." That product has lots switched on. Enter the lot (and expiry), or turn lots off for the product once its lots are at zero.
• "Insufficient stock in lots" / a kit cannot be stocked. A kit has no stock of its own — stock its components. For lot items, count the lots with Adjust so they add up to what is really on the shelf.