Inventory guide

Manage stock quantities, allocation, and stock maintenance tasks.

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Core workflow

  1. Review low-stock risk and create supplier purchase orders where needed
  2. Receive stock against the purchase order into a chosen location
  3. Put away, move, replenish, or quarantine stock by bin
  4. Allocate stock to orders
  5. Count and reconcile stock where it physically sits
  6. Record corrections where needed

What you can do

  • Manage stock items and stock groups
  • Open stock item detail from the linked SKU or product title in Stock items
  • Create stock-linked Amazon, eBay, Shopify and Website listing drafts from selected stock items
  • Review allocated lines
  • Review the current FIFO stock valuation
  • Maintain suppliers and supplier purchase orders
  • Run stock adjustments and checks
  • Transfer stock between locations and bins
  • Monitor low-stock risk

Stock items list controls

  • Search is the first control in the Stock items list card so SKU, product title, and description searches remain visually primary.
  • The low-stock shortcut appears inside Filters as Low stock (count). It becomes an active filter chip only when the low-stock filtered view is open.
  • On phones, bulk selection starts from a compact select icon. Choosing it expands the row to Done plus Bulk actions and reveals row selection controls.

Inventory execution model

  • Bin-level on-hand balance is the operational source of truth
  • Warehouse tasks keep an append-only movement history
  • The stock item summary is updated from warehouse balances

Allocation and valuation notes:

  • Allocated quantity remains visible at stock-item level for fast list and channel views
  • Sales allocation reserves stock at bin/lot level
  • Dispatch consumes reserved stock and records the matching movement and cost history

Stock valuation report

Use Inventory → Stock valuation to review current stock value from remaining FIFO cost layers.

The report shows:

  • Stock value from remaining FIFO cost layers
  • On-hand, reserved, available, and cost-layer quantities
  • Average unit cost for the remaining cost layers
  • Warning rows when physical warehouse quantity and cost-layer quantity differ

Each cost layer carries a currency code. Opening balances, adjustments, returns, and count variances use the account inventory valuation currency; purchase receipts inherit the purchase order currency when present.

Use Inventory → Data exchange → Export stock valuation CSV to download the valuation snapshot. Exports are recorded in the Data exchange activity feed.

Image previews in inventory lists

Inventory list forms include small thumbnail previews sourced from stock product image manifests:

  • Stock items list (inline thumbnail in the Item column)
  • Stock items low-stock filtered view
  • Allocated lines list (preview shown inside the Stock cell)

Performance rule for lists:

  • List forms use thumbnail variants only
  • Detail forms can use preview/original image URLs
  • If no thumbnail exists, the inline list summary simply omits the image

Barcode model

Stock uses two barcode concepts:

  • internal_barcode on the stock record for warehouse execution, labels, and account-unique scan identity
  • manufacturer_barcode on the stock product for the supplier / retail UPC, EAN, ISBN-13, or GTIN value on the item itself

On stock create, the internal barcode can be entered manually or left blank so ChannelWeave generates it automatically. After the stock item is saved, the standard stock-item edit form keeps the internal barcode read-only so warehouse labels and scans stay stable.

Warehouse scan precedence is:

  1. Internal barcode
  2. Manufacturer barcode
  3. SKU fallback

Barcode policy

Barcode rules are controlled in Settings → Inventory policies → Barcode policy.

That policy sets:

  • That every stock record receives an internal barcode on create
  • The internal barcode prefix and sequence width
  • That internal stock and bin labels render as Code 128
  • Whether manufacturer barcodes are optional, recommended, or required

SKU policy

SKU checks are controlled in Settings → Inventory policies → SKU policy and applied when creating, editing, and importing stock.

Stock item text fields

The stock item detail form keeps product-facing and team-facing text separate:

  • Product title stores the product-level title used to prefill listing draft titles. Edit the final channel-specific title on the draft itself. Use Draft with Eden and Add reference facts from the Product title row to prepare the default listing description from trusted product context. If reference facts include a product name while Product title is empty, use the explicit Use as product title action to copy it into the title field.
  • Default listing description stores the product-level draft prefill copy used when new listings are created from the stock item. Review and save this channel-neutral copy before creating listing drafts.
  • Reference facts stores product-level structured catalogue facts such as format, catalogue number, release year, material, or other source facts. These facts can be added manually or imported with Data Exchange reference_fact[...] columns. They help prepare drafts, but are not published until the user applies them to a draft.
  • Internal notes stores team-only notes on the stock product and is not used for channel listing copy.

Creating drafts from stock

On stock item detail, Create drafts opens the draft creation modal directly. The listing template is optional: continue without one to create basic stock-linked eBay, Shopify, Website or combined drafts from the stock defaults, or choose a saved listing template when you want its reusable pricing, copy, and policy rules applied to eBay and Website.

Amazon is shown in the modal as a disabled placeholder until the Amazon draft workflow is promoted from blueprint to persisted creation.

Stock groups

Use stock groups to organise items and control group-level behaviour.

On narrower layouts, the Name column becomes the primary summary cell. When the standalone Status column is hidden, stock-group status badges fold into Name, and only the final Action column stays sticky.