What inventory debt is, and when you want it instead of a backorder

Inventory debt is what SKU.io records when units leave the building that the stock ledger says you do not have. Instead of refusing the shipment, or letting it through and quietly losing track of the gap, SKU.io writes down what you owe: a claim for those units, against one product at one warehouse, carried at an estimated cost until real stock arrives to repay it.

Every other page in this section assumes this one. Read it once and the rest of the set — the report, the settlement, the ledger entries, the close — is the same idea seen from different desks.

What a claim is

Open Inventory → Fulfillment Debt and every row in the Inventory Debt Claims table is one claim. Reading a row left to right tells you most of what a claim is:

• Order and SKU / Product — the shipment that went out short, and what it was short of.
• Warehouse — debt is always owed from somewhere. A claim is tied to one product at one warehouse, so the same product can owe three units at one location while holding plenty at another. Two claims for the same product at two warehouses stay two claims, and they never net against each other.
• Source — who caused it: Operator when somebody chose to ship anyway, Channel when a sales channel reported a shipment SKU.io could not match to stock. See debt the sales channel created.
• Outstanding — how much is still owed, as outstanding / original. A row reading 2 / 4 has been half repaid.
• Est. unit cost and Clearing — what the shipment was costed at while there is no real cost to use, and what that estimate is currently sitting at in the clearing account. See what a debt shipment costs.
• Age — days since the units actually shipped, not since the claim was written. Old debt is where money quietly goes, so the report leads on it.
• Reason — the reason typed when the shipment was allowed, or the channel's own explanation.

A claim is a real movement, not a flag

A debt unit is not a note on the order. It is a row in the product's stock history like any other deduction. Open a debt-shipped order's Movements tab, or the product's Movements tab, and you see the shipment split into two Sale rows: one with status active for the units that came from stock, priced from the layer they consumed, and one with status debt for the shortfall, carrying the estimate rather than a real cost and with nothing in the Layer column. The empty layer is what marks the debt half out — those units came off no stock at all. A nine-unit shipment that found six units on the shelf shows exactly that pair: -6 active at the layer's cost, -3 debt at the estimate.

Here is a smaller one on screen — an eight-unit shipment, six of them off the shelf at the layer's cost and two with nothing behind them:

That is also why availability can read negative. Once three units are owed, the product's On Hand and Available for that warehouse show -3 in the adjustment dialog and on the product, and stay there until stock lands. See debt on your reports.

Debt is created by a shipment, never in advance

There is no way to pre-authorise selling stock you do not have. A claim only comes into existence at the moment a shipment actually goes out short. The policy in Settings → Inventory decides whether that moment is allowed to happen at all — Block, Warn or Allow — but it never books anything on its own. Which policy applies to a given shipment is on which policy applies to a shipment.

It repays itself

You do not normally settle a claim by hand. The next receipt of that product at that warehouse repays the oldest claim first, and the difference between the estimate and the real cost posts as a dated variance. See how debt repays itself. Until then the month's cost of sale is provisional, which is why the pressure lands on your month-end close rather than on the warehouse floor — see close a month with debt outstanding.

Debt or backorder: which one you want

When an order line has no stock to reserve, SKU.io backorders it. On the order's Fulfillment tab it appears under Backordered — Awaiting Stock, holding a reservation against incoming stock, with Move and Unallocate beside it. When the product and warehouse are allowed to carry debt, a third option appears on the same row: Ship Anyway.

The panel says it in one line: You don't have to wait: Ship Anyway sends the units now and records what you owe as an inventory debt claim, which the next receipt settles. The two choices are not interchangeable:

	Backorder	Ship into debt
The customer	Waits for stock	Gets the goods now
The books	Stay accurate; nothing has moved	Catch up later, at an estimated cost until the receipt lands
The stock ledger	Holds a reservation against incoming stock	Reserves nothing — the units have already left
When stock arrives	The reservation is released and the line ships	The claim is repaid and the variance posts

Use Ship Anyway when the goods are physically there and the count is behind: a receipt that has not been booked yet, an uncounted returns bin, a warehouse that shipped before you saw the paperwork. Use a backorder when the goods genuinely are not there. Shipping into debt is a statement that the parcel left, and everything downstream — the cost estimate, the clearing balance, the close check — takes you at your word.

Ship Anyway does not appear for every backordered line. Serial-, lot- and consignment-tracked stock can never ship into debt, and a product or warehouse can be set to Block; on those lines the panel offers only Move and Unallocate. The walkthrough is ship an order when the stock isn't there; the refusals you can hit are on when a shipment is refused.

Changing your mind

If you void a shipment that went out on debt, the units do not stay owed. They go back into ordinary allocation for that line, so they end up allocated against stock if there is any, or backordered again if there is not. A shipment whose debt has already been repaid — even in part — refuses to void: the stock that repaid it has been consumed, and unwinding the shipment would leave that stock used up with nothing to explain it. See undo a shipment that went out on debt.

What is not debt

Three things look like a shortfall and are deliberately kept off the claims ledger.

Shipping more than was ordered

If you ship three against an order for two, and three were on the shelf, no debt is created. The extra unit is deducted by its own stock adjustment, so the stock ledger stays right and nothing is invented. Only a genuine shortfall — units that left with no stock behind them — becomes a claim. Without that split, the surplus would be deducted twice and a claim written for stock that really did leave.

Inventory repairs

Running an inventory health repair never creates a claim, and never changes an existing one: a shortfall found while repairing inventory data is evidence of the problem being repaired, not a shipment anyone chose to make, so the repair stops and reports it.

Corrections and counts

A stock take or an inventory adjustment is you telling SKU.io what is physically on the shelf, and a physical count cannot be negative — no future receipt could ever repay a count of minus two. So neither can take a warehouse below zero: they are refused, not converted into debt. Debt only ever comes from shipping. The one way a count touches debt is the other direction: counting stock in can repay a claim that nothing else will. See Clear debt no delivery will repay.

Next steps

• Turn on shipping below zero — the policy, the clearing account and the cost chain.
• Ship an order when the stock isn't there — Ship Anyway step by step.
• Debt the sales channel created — when the shipment was not your decision.
• How debt repays itself — which receipts settle a claim, and in what order.
• Claim statuses and sources — every status and source on the report.