Inventory

Learn how the reorder forecast and low stock lists work, where the reorder point is set, and what the movements ledger records.

Stock is held per variant per location, and every change is written to a ledger that is only ever added to.

The Inventory page at Catalog → Inventory is two lists — a reorder forecast and a low stock list — with a Movements page behind them showing every change, its reason, and who made it.

The two lists answer different questions. One is about what is going to run out; the other is about what already has.

The records behind it are Inventory, StockLocation and StockMovement.

The two lists

Reorder forecast

The forecast shows how many days each variant has left at its recent sales rate, listing only the ones at risk.

This is the list to work first. It catches a fast seller before it reaches the reorder point, which is the only point at which reordering is still ahead of the problem.

Low stock

The low stock list shows every variant at or below the reorder point, with the out-of-stock ones first.

The reorder point

The reorder point is one number under Settings, defaulting to 5.

It is store-wide, not a per-variant threshold. Every surface that judges scarcity reads that same number:

the low stock list
the Limited Stock badge
search-engine availability
the merchant feed
the checkout nudge

Because they all read one setting, they cannot disagree about what "low" means. Move the number once and every one of them moves with it.

A ledger, not a running total

Each movement records:

the change
the quantity before it
the quantity after it
the reason
whether it came from the system, a person, the API or a webhook
what caused it — an order, a return, a transfer, or a manual adjustment

Movements are only ever inserted. They are never edited or deleted, and they are always written at the same moment as the quantity change itself.

Every movement has to add up:

quantity before + change = quantity after

A movement that changes nothing is not allowed.

Stock is added up when you read it

The number you see is summed from the active locations holding that variant.

There is no separate total kept alongside the locations, so there is nothing that can fall out of step with them.

Stock drift is never corrected silently

If stock levels and recorded movements disagree, an alert is raised — named InventoryLedgerDrift — instead of the difference being silently corrected.

Locations have roles

A location can:

fulfil online orders
allow customer pickup
do both
do neither

A priority ranks which location is preferred.

A location can serve one market, or all of them.

What happens at zero is per variant

You can turn tracking off entirely for a variant.

Or leave it on and choose whether a sold-out variant:

blocks add-to-cart and checkout
stays buyable as a back-order

Setting it up

Define your stock locations and say which fulfil orders and which allow pickup.
Set quantities per variant per location from the product, and choose each variant's behaviour at zero.
Work the reorder forecast and low stock lists; orders, returns and manual adjustments each write a movement you can audit later.

Which list to work

Three of the worklist rows on the home page come from stock:

Low stock
stockout imminent
dead stock

Work the reorder forecast before the low stock list. The forecast is about what will run out; the low stock list is about what already has, and the out-of-stock rows at the top of it are sales you have stopped being able to make.

Go to Movements when the question is not how much but why — the reason, the source and the cause are all on the row.

And when a number looks wrong, do not adjust it into place before you look:

Stock is summed from its locations and every change is on the ledger, so a figure that seems wrong has a movement behind it — the drift alert exists precisely because that difference should be explained rather than quietly corrected.