Stock levels & adjustments
Stock is tracked per variant (or per product, for products without variants) under Inventory → Inventory in the admin. Each row shows three numbers and a status. For the wider setup sequence, follow the first-sale checklist.
The three numbers
| Number | What it means |
|---|---|
| Total | Units physically on hand. |
| Reserved | Units set aside for orders or manual reservations — included in Total, but unavailable for another sale. |
| Available | Total minus Reserved — units available for new orders. |
Check Available when deciding whether a tracked row has enough stock for an order. Units can still be physically on hand while a reservation keeps them unavailable for another sale.
Enter opening stock
New Sale products and each new Sale variant start with Total 0, Available 0, Reserved 0, and Out of stock status. Creating or activating the product does not add stock.
- Open Inventory → Inventory and find the product.
- Match the row to the exact variant name, SKU, and options you want to stock. Stock each variant separately; item-level stock does not supply its variant rows. For a product without variants, use its product-level row.
- Select Adjust on that row.
- Enter the change in Delta (signed integer). To enter 25 units on a new zero-stock row, enter 25.
- Enter a Reason, such as "Opening stock count", then select Apply adjustment.
- Check the refreshed Total, Available, and status. Repeat for every variant you will offer.
For a row that already contains stock, calculate the change from its current Total. If Total is 8 and your physical count is 25, enter 17. Entering 25 would add 25 units and leave Total at 33. Any existing Reserved units stay reserved, so Available can be lower than Total.
If the stock row is missing
Only Sale products and their variants have stock rows. If a product intended for ordinary sale was saved as Rental or Service, open it in Catalog → Items, change Type → Sale, and choose Save Changes. This creates its stock rows; return to Inventory and check them before adjusting the opening stock. Do not change the type of a genuine rental or service just to create stock rows.
An older Sale product or variant may still have no stock row. Check your filters and the exact item or variant first, then:
- Select Add inventory row.
- Choose the Item or variant. The picker offers only targets without a stock row.
- Enter Opening quantity as the whole number of units on hand, including zero if none are on hand. Set a Low-stock threshold if needed; 0 disables the warning.
- Select Create row. Check the resulting Total and Available; Reserved starts at zero.
If a row already exists, it is returned unchanged: the opening quantity and threshold you entered are not applied. Use that row's Adjust or Threshold action to change it.
A missing row is not an out-of-stock setting: older products without a stock row can remain purchasable. Create the row and check its Available quantity before relying on inventory to limit sales.
Stock moves with orders — automatically
- Order reservation → the ordered units move from Available to Reserved.
- Order cancellation completes → its remaining reserved units move back to Available. A pending cancellation request does not confirm that stock has been released; check the final order status.
- Units fulfilled → those units leave Total and Reserved entirely.
You never adjust stock to reflect an order; that's handled for you.
Adjust stock by hand
Use Adjust on a row for everything orders don't cover — receiving a shipment, cycle counts, damage, shrinkage:
- Enter Delta (signed integer): positive to add units, negative to remove them (zero isn't accepted).
- Enter a Reason (required) — "received PO #1234", "damaged unit". It's recorded in the audit log, so there's always a paper trail for who changed stock and why.
- Select Apply adjustment, then check the refreshed row.
An adjustment moves Total and Available together; it never touches Reserved. You can't adjust below zero — if a removal would leave less Available than zero, it's rejected and nothing changes.
Low-stock thresholds
Each row has its own threshold — so a fast-moving variant can alarm at 20 while a slow one alarms at 2:
- When Available falls to or below the threshold (but above zero), the row's status becomes Low stock.
- Set the threshold to 0 to turn the low-stock signal off for that row.
What the statuses mean
- In stock — Available is above the threshold.
- Low stock — Available is at or below the threshold (and above zero).
- Out of stock — Available has run out (zero or below); customers can't buy it. This is also what lets shoppers ask to be notified — see Low-stock & back-in-stock alerts.
Who can do this
Owners and Admins can create missing stock rows, adjust stock, and set thresholds in the admin, and so can Staff granted the Inventory permission group. Staff without the group see inventory read-only. See Team & permissions.
Related
- First-sale checklist — prepare your catalog, stock, and checkout
- Low-stock & back-in-stock alerts — acting on the signals
- Products & variants — the catalog these rows belong to
- Audit log — every adjustment, with its reason