Inventory — overview

Inventory in SKU.io is the running record of what stock you own, where it sits, what it's committed to, and what it cost. Every product that you track carries a live picture of its quantities across warehouses and bins, and every change — a receipt, a sale, a count, a transfer, an adjustment — is written to a permanent movement ledger that you can audit at any time. The on-screen numbers you see on a product are a fast cache rebuilt from that ledger, so the ledger, not the cache, is always the source of truth.

You reach stock control from the Inventory area of the left navigation, and from the Inventory tab on any product. Start with the product inventory list to find a product, then open its stock across warehouses to see and act on its quantities.

The stock-control lifecycle

Most day-to-day inventory work falls into six kinds of task. They aren't a strict sequence — you dip into whichever one the situation calls for — but together they describe how a unit moves from arrival to valuation.

1. Receive. Stock enters through a purchase-order receipt, a positive adjustment, an incoming warehouse transfer, or the opening balance you set when you set up a product's inventory. Each receipt opens a FIFO layer that carries the units and their cost.
2. Hold and allocate. Once stock is on hand, it gets committed. Allocations reserve on-hand units to sales-order lines; anything you can't cover queues as a backorder. You can also place a stock hold to fence units off from sale for quarantine, QA, or a planned use.
3. Count. You verify physical stock against the system with a stock take: snapshot the on-hand figure, count the shelves, then finalize to reconcile the variance into an adjustment.
4. Transfer. You move stock between warehouses with a warehouse transfer — create, ship, and receive it — or between bins in the same warehouse with a location transfer.
5. Adjust. You correct stock directly with an adjustment — increase, decrease, or set a quantity — for damage, shrinkage, found stock, or a fix. Review and manage adjustments after the fact.
6. Value. Every unit carries a cost through its FIFO layer, and shipping a sale realizes that cost as COGS. When costs are wrong, you revalue or rebuild them and watch the SKU COGS Health dashboard.

Every one of these tasks writes to the same movement ledger, which is why your quantities always reconcile back to a documented cause.

Stock states at a glance

A product's quantity isn't a single number — it's split across states that answer different questions. On Hand is what you physically have; Available is what you can still sell; the rest is spoken for.

State	What it means
On Hand	Units physically in your warehouses. Equals Available + Allocated + On Hold + Non-Sellable.
Available	On-hand units free to sell — On Hand minus everything committed, floored at zero.
Allocated	On-hand units committed to open sales-order lines.
On Hold	On-hand units fenced off by a stock hold.
Non-Sellable	On-hand units sitting in bins flagged non-sellable (damaged, quarantine). Physically present, not available to sell.
Incoming	Unreceived units on open purchase orders — inbound supply, not yet on hand.
In Transit	Units in flight between your own warehouses on a shipped transfer — not yet received.

Total Inventory counts everything you own including in-flight transfer stock, so On Hand = Total − In Transit. Because Non-Sellable is a first-class part of On Hand, that reconciliation holds even when damaged or quarantined stock is present.

There is no "reserved" state

SKU.io commits stock through allocations and holds only. Units set aside for an order are Allocated; units fenced off manually are On Hold. There is no separate "reserved" inventory status. The stock states concept and the stock states & fields reference define each state in full.

Incoming isn't In Transit

Incoming is stock arriving from a supplier on an open purchase order. In Transit is your own stock moving between your warehouses. They're tracked separately because they answer different questions — "what's on the way from vendors?" versus "what's mid-transfer between my sites?". See Stock states for the distinction.

Guides in this section

Find and set up stock

• Browse & search the product inventory list
• View a product's stock across warehouses
• Set up a product's inventory settings

Adjust stock

• Adjust stock (increase, decrease, set)
• Review, correct & delete adjustments

Count stock (stock takes)

• Create a stock take & add items
• Count stock (initiate, enter counts, re-baseline)
• Finalize & reconcile a stock take
• Amend, re-date, reverse & delete a stock take

Move stock (transfers)

• Create & open a warehouse transfer
• Ship a transfer
• Receive a transfer (full, partial & exceptions)
• Close a transfer, add costs & post accounting
• Move stock between bins (location transfers)

Commit stock (allocations, backorders & holds)

• Work the backorder queue / allocation pipeline
• Browse allocations & pin stock to bins
• Place & manage stock holds

Audit & value stock

• View & filter the inventory movement ledger
• Browse & manage FIFO layers
• Revalue COGS (single, bulk & the COGS report)
• Rebuild COGS & the SKU COGS Health dashboard

Understand the model

Once you've worked your first few tasks, these guides explain how the pieces fit together underneath.

• Stock states — on-hand, available, allocated, on-hold, non-sellable, incoming, and in-transit, and how each is derived.
• The inventory movement ledger — the append-only audit trail behind every quantity.
• FIFO layers & how COGS is realized — how receipts open cost layers and sales consume them.
• Correcting COGS: revalue vs rebuild vs recalculate — which tool fixes which kind of cost problem.
• Allocations & backorders — how stock commits to lines and how backorders queue and release.
• How stock takes work — snapshots, blind counts, and reconciliation.
• How warehouse transfers work — the transfer, shipment, and receipt lifecycle, and in-transit stock.
• How adjustments move stock & cost — what an adjustment does to your quantities and FIFO layers.

Reference

• Stock states & fields reference — every quantity bucket and inventory field.
• Movement types & fields reference — every movement type, sign convention, and field.
• Adjustment fields, reasons & columns
• Stock take statuses, fields & list
• Transfer statuses, fields & list
• FIFO layer fields, statuses & enums
• Allocation, hold & backorder statuses & fields

Channel-managed stock behaves differently

Stock held by a marketplace — Amazon FBA, AWD, or Walmart WFS — is managed by that channel, not by hand. You can't manually receive a channel-managed warehouse transfer; SKU.io rejects it with a message and keeps those quantities in sync from the channel instead. See How warehouse transfers work and Receive a transfer.

Next steps

• New here? Start by browsing the product inventory list, then view a product's stock.
• Need to correct a quantity? See Adjust stock.
• Verifying physical stock? Read Create a stock take.
• Want the full quantity picture? Read Stock states.