Inventory

Litestore counts your stock for each variant at each location you keep stock in. Use the Inventory page when you want to know what to reorder, what has already run out, or why a number changed.

Every stock change is written to a ledger. Litestore only ever adds entries to it and never edits or removes them.

What the Inventory page shows

You open the page from Catalog → Inventory. It has two lists, a reorder forecast and a low stock list. Behind them is a Movements page that shows every change, the reason for it, and who made it.

The two lists answer different questions. The forecast tells you what is going to run out. The low stock list tells you what already has.

In the database, this data is stored in the Inventory, StockLocation and StockMovement records.

Reorder forecast

The forecast works out how many days of stock each variant has left at its recent sales rate. It lists only the variants that are at risk.

Work this list first. It catches a fast seller before it reaches the reorder point, and that is the last moment when a reorder can still arrive ahead of the problem.

Low stock

The low stock list shows every variant whose stock is at or below the reorder point. Variants that are out of stock appear at the top.

The reorder point

The reorder point is a single number that you set under Settings. It defaults to 5.

It applies to the whole store. You don't set it for each variant. Every part of Litestore that decides whether stock is scarce reads this same number:

• the low stock list
• the Limited Stock badge
• availability shown to search engines
• the merchant feed
• the checkout nudge

Because they all read one setting, they can never disagree about what "low" means. When you change the number, all of them change with it.

How the ledger records changes

Litestore writes a movement for every stock change. Each movement records these details:

• the change itself
• the quantity before it
• the quantity after it
• the reason
• whether the system, a person, the API or a webhook made the change
• what caused it, such as an order, a return, a transfer or a manual adjustment

Litestore writes the movement at the same moment as it changes the quantity. Once written, a movement is never edited or deleted.

Every movement has to add up:

quantity before + change = quantity after

Litestore doesn't allow a movement that changes nothing.

How the stock figure is worked out

The stock number you see is the sum of the quantities at every active location that holds the variant.

Litestore doesn't keep a separate total next to the locations. That means there is no second number that could drift away from them.

What a location can do

You decide what each location is used for. A location can:

• fulfil online orders
• let customers pick up orders
• do both
• do neither

Each location also has a priority, which tells Litestore which location to prefer. A location can serve one market or all of them.

What happens when a variant reaches zero

You choose this for each variant. You can turn stock tracking off for a variant entirely.

If you leave tracking on, you choose what happens when the variant sells out. It can either block add-to-cart and checkout, or stay on sale as a back-order.

Setting it up

1. Create your stock locations. Say which ones fulfil orders and which ones allow pickup.
2. Set the quantities on each product. Enter stock for each variant at each location, and choose what each variant does when it reaches zero.
3. Work the two lists. Use the reorder forecast and the low stock list. Orders, returns and manual adjustments each write a movement that you can check later.

Which list to work

Three of the rows in the home page worklist come from stock. They are Low stock, stockout imminent and dead stock.

Work the reorder forecast before the low stock list. The forecast shows what will run out. The low stock list shows what already has, and the out-of-stock rows at its top are sales you can no longer make.

Open Movements when you want to know why a number changed rather than what it is. Each row shows the reason, the source and the cause.

When a number looks wrong, look before you adjust it:

Litestore adds stock up from its locations and records every change in the ledger. A figure that seems wrong has a movement behind it, and the drift alert exists so that you explain the difference instead of quietly correcting it.

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