Keeping stock right

Every time your supplier is read, something has to decide what your shop’s numbers become. There is more than one sensible answer, so the choice is yours to make. This page explains both, and which fits which kind of shop.

A Navy Medium is counted on its own

Stock is held for the pair: this colour in this size. A Navy Medium is not a Navy, and it is not a Medium. It is its own thing with its own number.

That sounds obvious, but it is what separates a shop that oversells from one that does not. Say a supplier holds 40 Navy across all sizes, and 12 Medium across all colours. Neither number tells you how many Navy Mediums there are. Counting either way lets somebody buy a Navy Medium that does not exist.

Every counter on your product is set from the pair it belongs to. A size that has run out shows as run out, even when the colour still has plenty.

Two ways to decide the number

Set this per supplier, on their connect screen, under Your stock numbers.

Show their figure (the default)

Your shop’s number becomes the supplier’s number, exactly. If they say 100, you say 100.

Simple, and right for most shops most of the time. It has one risk and it is worth understanding before you leave it on: it does not know what you have sold. If you sell 40 and the supplier’s figure has not moved, the next read puts you back to 100. The 40 you sold are on sale again.

For a shop whose supplier updates several times a day, that window is small and mirroring is fine. For a shop reading a file once a night, it is not.

Take off what you have already sold

Your sales are remembered and subtracted.

Read the supplier at 100, and 100 is written quietly as the baseline. Sell 40 and you go to 60. The supplier restocks to 120, and you go to 80, not 120. The forty you sold are still owed, and the supplier has not sent them yet.

Nothing you have sold is ever put back on sale by a refresh. The screen shows what is owed, in units and in lines, so you can see at a glance whether the figure is drifting.

When you place your trade order, press I have ordered from them on the supplier’s screen. The held-back units return to sale on the next update, and counting starts again.

This is the setting to use if you cannot watch it, or if the same item sells more than once between reads.

The safety margin

Separately from the policy, Safety margin keeps a number of units back from every line.

Whatever the supplier says, that many are removed before your shop sees the figure. Ten in stock with two held back shows as eight.

It is a margin for error rather than a policy, and it applies under both policies. It covers three things:

• the gap between the supplier’s last count and this minute
• a picking mistake
• a line you would rather never be the last person to sell

A ceiling on what you show

Next to it sits Never show more than, a cap on the figure your shop shows. A wholesaler holding 40,000 of something does not need your product page to say 40,000; put 500 there and the product shows 500. Zero means no cap, and it never shows more than the supplier really has.

Which one should you pick

	Choose it when
Show their figure	Their figures refresh often, and you want your numbers to match theirs exactly.
Take off what you have already sold	You read once or twice a day, or the same items sell repeatedly between reads.

If you are unsure, hold back. The cost of being slightly under is a sale you make tomorrow. The cost of being over is an order you cannot fill and a customer who tells people about it.

When it will not write at all

A number is only written when it can be trusted. If a read fails, arrives half-finished, or the file is not what it said it was, nothing is written. Your existing numbers stay exactly as they are. An old number is a great deal better than a wrong one.

Why it refuses a file covers the wording you will see, and health, history and alerts covers being told when a supplier goes quiet.

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Next: pause or stop a supplier covers what happens to your numbers when you disconnect one, including the units it gives back.