Opening stock, and keeping it right

Stock is one row per item and one column per branch. That shape answers the question you will actually ask — where is it — instead of making you hold three branch lists in your head.

Search by SKU or barcode, or scan straight into the box. The Filter next to it narrows to At or below threshold, Out of stock or Negative, which is how you find the rows that need work.

A negative row gets a Why is this negative? link underneath it. Open it and you see the movements that drove it below zero, newest last, with the document number beside each one.

There are three ways a quantity gets in: you count and type it, you scan the shelf, or a supplier delivers. For your first load, type it. It is the fastest and it is exactly what the reason Correction means.

Do one branch at a time. Count a section of the shop, type it in, save, then move to the next section. A single adjustment holding two hundred lines is one mistake away from being unpickable.

Stock that changes without a reason is stock nobody can explain three months later. The inventory report groups adjustments by reason — that is your shrinkage report — and free text cannot be grouped. So the list is fixed and short.

Correction means the books were wrong; use it for the opening load. Damaged is torn, stained, unsellable. Lost is the theft column: it should be here and it is not. Found is the opposite. Expired is rare in apparel and common in whatever else you carry.

Other exists, and picking it makes the Note field appear and become required. That note is what the shrinkage report prints instead of a code, so write something a stranger could read.

A stock count is the same job as an adjustment done with a scanner instead of a keyboard, and it is what you will use from now on. Each scan adds one, so two people counting the same rail add up rather than overwrite each other.

What each line was expected to hold is taken at the moment that line is first scanned, not when the count started. A sale rung during the count is therefore not read as a loss.

A transfer is three steps: draft, send, receive. Sending deducts the units from the sending branch straight away and allocates the transfer number. Until somebody receives them the units belong to neither branch — they are in transit and counted nowhere.

Receiving asks you to count each line. That is deliberate; a screen with one receive all button is a screen where nobody ever counts. If a line arrives short, or something turns up in the box that is not on the paperwork, add it — an unlisted item left off the record is stock on a shelf that exists in no record at all.

When what arrived does not match what was sent, the sending branch decides what happened before the transfer can close: They are at the receiving branch, They are at the sending branch, or Written off — the items are lost.

Stock alert rules is where you say what counts as low. Add a rule, point it at everything or at one product or one item, set the Threshold, and choose one branch or all branches. The most specific rule wins.

Negative stock does not need a rule — it is raised on its own, because it is a different problem with a different fix and folding it into ordinary reorder noise would hide a real oversell.

Raised alerts appear under Alerts, one per item and branch until it is resolved. A shelf that stays low for a week is one alert, not seven, and a restock closes it by itself.