Adjustments, transfers and bins

A stock figure can be changed by hand in your account without the unit going missing from the record. An adjustment corrects a count, a transfer moves stock to another site, and a bin move changes the shelf within a site. Months later, when someone asks why twelve units of hand cream disappeared in March, the answer is on the screen rather than in someone's memory.

Stock adjustments

After Tuesday's stocktake you count 18 of a hand cream and the account says 20. Find the product on the Inventory page, click the row to open the detail drawer, and click Adjust stock in the drawer's toolbar. Pick the location, and a bin if the correction belongs to one, or leave it on no specific bin to correct the location as a whole. Enter the change as a signed number, minus two here, plus five if you found five. Pick a reason: stocktake correction, breakage or damage, sample sent, found stock, lost or stolen, or other with your own words. Add a note if the reason needs one, then save.

The on-hand figure moves at once, and the drawer's recent movements list now shows the adjustment, with the change, the time, the reason and the person who recorded it; that line is the audit trail. Use it for a broken bottle, a sample that went to a buyer, a unit you thought was lost and found behind a pallet, and every stocktake.

Every change to a stock figure carries a reason and a name.

Transfers between locations

Your London warehouse has run dry on a bestseller and Manchester is overstocked, so fifty units go north. Open the product's drawer, click Transfer between locations, choose the from and to locations, and the window shows how much is available to transfer at the source. Enter the quantity, set an expected arrival date for the receiving site if you want one, and click Transfer stock. London's on hand drops by fifty, Manchester's rises by fifty, and the total you own does not change. Both ends are written together, so if anything fails, neither side moves and there is no ghost stock that left one building and never arrived in the other.

A transfer moves stock held at location level only; stock parked in a specific bin stays where it is. If a site's units are sitting in bins, the available-to-transfer figure will be lower than the headline total, and you move the units out of the bin first.

Bin moves

Bin A12 is overflowing, or the fast movers belong nearer the packing station, or five units turned up in a miscellaneous bin. In the product's drawer, under stock by location, expand the location, find the bin row, and click Move at the end of it. Choose the destination bin at the same location, enter the quantity, add a note if you like, and click Move stock. The location's total does not change; only the place inside the building does. Pickers find things faster when the bin labels in the account match the real shelves, and this is how the map stays true as the warehouse changes.

Adjustment, transfer or bin move

If the shelf and the screen disagree, it is an adjustment. If the units are in another building, or about to be, it is a transfer. If the units are in the same building but on a different shelf, it is a bin move. When in doubt, ask whether the total you own changed: only an adjustment changes it.