Somewhere to store it: Warehouses and stock

As mentioned in the previous chapters, each Product has at least one Variant, and every Variant has at least one Size. In Centra, stock is defined on the Size level, which means we keep information about inventory for every Size of every Variant of every Product.

Warehouses and Allocation Rules

A warehouse in Centra is where stock information about every product size is stored. Warehouse is defined by its name and priority. Each Warehouse can belong to one or more Allocation Rules. When stock is added, either by importing a CSV or via stock editor, it always needs to be added to one of the Warehouses. Warehouse can also be connected to a Brick&Mortar store entity, in which case it can be connected to a specific geographical location and meta information, like opening hours (if your warehouse is a PoS location).

One Allocation Rule can belong to multiple Markets, but one Market can have only one Allocation Rule. This way Centra controls which warehouses' stock will be displayed in each market.

Example stock levels and definitions

• Physical = FTA + Allocated
  This is the quantity that you have on the shelf in the warehouse. You should get to this number when counting physical inventory.

• FTA = Physical - Allocated (- Warehouse Threshold/Product Variant offset)
  Free to Allocate. This is the quantity of said product which is available to allocate on orders, or simply, this is the quantity available for sale at the moment. You can sell that quantity without affecting existing orders.
  Quantity might be protected from being sold by "Warehouse Threshold" or "Product variant offset" setting. If product offset is greater than 0, it overrides warehouse threshold settings.

• Allocated = Physical - FTA
  The number of said products that are allocated on orders or shipments which are not yet shipped.

• Linked
  The quantity of said product which is on order and linked towards a supplier order.

• Demand
  The quantity of said product which is on order but not linked to a supplier order or allocated. In other words, amount of products ordered via preorder or backorder, which will need to have Stock added in order to be allocated and shipped in the future.

• Unshipped
  The quantity of products on the order which are not yet shipped, including preorder or demand.

• Available now = FTA - Demand
  The quantity available right now of said product.

• Unlinked
  The unlinked quantity of said product. This field is only used if you’re using the Supplier Module.

• Incoming
  The incoming quantity of said product. This field is only populated if you’re using the Supplier Module and have supplier orders with products which are not yet delivered. The supplier order also need to have a preferred warehouse for this to show up correctly.

• On delivery
  This field will be populated with data if said product is on a delivery created from a supplier order, which are not yet accepted.

• Available = FTA - Demand + Incoming
  The total of said product’s stock including incoming supplier orders.

How to avoid overselling?

There are options to set threshold or offset which you can configure in Centra AMS backend:

• Warehouse threshold setting: AMS -> Stores management -> Warehouses -> set Threshold value
• Product variant offset: AMS -> Products -> Edit Stock settings on specific variant -> set Offset value

Another feature you may like is Overselling Prevention, which allows you to enable additional stock checks before or after payment. Talk to your FE agency if you feel like this might help your webshop.