How are my stock levels determined in ShippingEasy?
This feature is available to existing Inventory Management subscribers. Learn more about using the ShippingEasy Product Catalog.
ShippingEasy's Inventory Management tool is purpose-built to keep accurate counts of your stock levels as they change - and there are many factors that come into play.
Stock levels you will see in ShippingEasy:
- Stock: the total stock you have on-hand.
- Committed: the on-hand stock that is already committed to unshipped orders.
- Available: the on-hand stock that is available for sale; the count that is sent to your store/s in stock updates.
- Sold: once the product is shipped, the inventory is considered "sold".
- Awaiting: the amount of inventory that has not been "received" and is included on "open" Purchase Orders.
Determining stock levels:
Anyone working in a warehouse knows, products are constantly in motion - being received from suppliers, getting stored, then finally picked, packed, and shipped off to customers. This physical motion translates to stock transfers within your inventory accounting. ShippingEasy tracks all of this for you, using these rules to report your stock levels.
Stock:
As "Stock" is all the inventory you have on-hand, it is calculated as "Available" stock plus "Committed" stock.
It is also possible to increase "Stock" levels by receiving "Awaiting" stock from open Purchase Orders.
Committed:
Within ShippingEasy, "Committed" stock specifically refers to the inventory associated with orders that were placed on your store/s after Inventory Management was added to your ShippingEasy account.
Keep in mind, old orders which were placed before you subscribed to Inventory Management will not affect your "Committed" stock levels. This is to safeguard
Available:
Since "Available" stock is the inventory that you have available to sell, it is calculated as "Stock" minus "Committed" stock. This is because the stock has been attached to an order and is not available to sell.
As noted above, old orders that were placed before you subscribed to Inventory Management will not affect your "Committed" stock levels. This also means that they will not affect your "Available" stock levels - that is as long as the orders remain unshipped. Though, once these old orders are shipped, the stock for the products in the order will move directly from "Available" to "Sold".
Why "old orders" do not affect stock levels until they are shipped:
To ensure only active orders can adjust Available stock, ShippingEasy has a guard in place to prevent "old orders" from affecting stock levels. Orders are considered "old" if they were placed on your store/s before Inventory Management was added to your ShippingEasy account.
In the event that old orders are downloaded to your ShippingEasy account, this safeguard prevents an inaccurate adjustment to Available stock. This is important because Available stock is the value sent back to your store/s in stock updates.
However, should you need to ship the old orders with your current stock, simply ship the order and the stock will correctly move directly from Available to Sold.
Awaiting:
Within ShippingEasy, you can create Purchase Orders to assist in reordering product from your Suppliers. "Awaiting" stock describes any products that are included on open Purchase Orders, but have not yet been received.
Once the "Awaiting" stock is received, it will be moved into "Committed" or "Available" depending on whether there are any unshipped orders for the product.
Using examples to understand stock transfers:
Stock transfers are easily understood using real world scenarios. We will start with a simple example to clarify how stock transfers work for individual product SKUs. Then we explain more involved scenarios, involving bundles and variant groups.
Example - determining the stock level of an individual Product SKU:
Example: You sell t-shirts and one of your best sellers is your red t-shirt - SKU tshirt_red.
- You have 10 in Stock because even though they sell quickly, your supplier is nearby.
SKU Stock Available Committed Sold Awaiting tshirt_red 10 10 0 0 0 -
You receive an order from your store for 5 tshirt_red. This moves 5 units from Available to Committed.
SKU Stock Available Committed Sold Awaiting tshirt_red 10 5 5 0 0 -
Speedy delivery is important to you, so you ship the t-shirts same day. The 5 shipped units move from Committed to Sold which also affects your on-hand Stock number and brings it down to 5 units (to match your Available + your Committed stock).
SKU Stock Available Committed Sold Awaiting tshirt_red 5 5 0 5 0 -
Since you are now low in stock and you want to be sure you don't run out, you send a purchase order to your supplier for 10 units.
SKU Stock Available Committed Sold Awaiting tshirt_red 5 5 0 5 10 -
You receive the 10 additional units same-day, which brings your on-hand Stock and your Available stock to 15 units.
SKU Stock Available Committed Sold Awaiting tshirt_red 15 15 0 5 0
Example - determining the stock level for a Bundle:
There are a few ideas to keep in mind when determining the stock of a bundle:
- The stock level of a bundle depends on the stock levels of the products in the bundle.
- Likewise, when an order is placed for a bundle SKU, it adjusts the stock of the component SKU as well.
- As a bundle SKU is comprised of other SKUs, you will not reorder the bundle SKU from your supplier. Instead, you'll order the component SKUs from your supplier. As such, a bundle will never have Awaiting stock.
Example: you have a Summertime Bundle that includes 1 Sunscreen, 1 pair of Sunglasses, and 1 pair of Sandals.
You have one unshipped order for the Summertime Bundle as well as a few separate orders for the Sunscreen and Sunglasses as well.
Here are the stock levels of the products within the bundle:
| SKU | Stock | Available | Committed |
| Sunscreen | 10 | 7 | 3 |
| Sunglasses | 15 | 9 | 6 |
| Sandals | 5 | 4 | 1 |
By using this information, we can determine the stock levels of the Summertime Bundle SKU:
| SKU | Stock | Available | Committed |
| Summertime Bundle | 5 | 4 | 1 |
Example - determining the stock level for a Variant Group:
The stock levels of a variant group are the sum total of the stock levels of the variant products in the group.
Example: you sell your t-shirt in 4 different colors: red, blue, green, and yellow.
Here are the stock levels of the variant products in the group:
| SKU | Stock | Available | Committed |
| tshirt_red | 15 | 15 | 0 |
| tshirt_blue | 10 | 5 | 5 |
| tshirt_green | 8 | 5 | 3 |
| tshirt_yellow | 12 | 8 | 4 |
By using this information, we can determine the stock levels of the T-shirt Variant Group:
| Variant Group Parent | Stock | Available | Committed |
| T-shirt | 45 | 33 | 12 |
Related articles:
How to: Add SKU Variants to Products
How to: Add a Supplier
How to: Create a Purchase Order
How to: Set up Velocity, Forecasting & Replenishment
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