How to configure your inventory settings

These are the defaults behind every purchase, receipt and count. You can run a whole shop without opening this screen, which is why nobody does — and then wonders why freight never reached the cost of a part, or why nobody was told the batteries ran out.

1. 1

   Open Settings → Inventory and purchasing

   Each block opens on its own, so you can change one thing and leave the rest alone. Nothing here applies retroactively: you are setting what happens next.

2. 2

   Decide which charges raise the cost

   Tick the charges that should become part of what your stock is worth — freight, duties, handling. What you leave out still goes on the supplier's bill; it just does not go into the value of what you hold. Leaving everything out is what makes a part look cheaper than it was.

3. 3

   Choose how freight and duties are spread

   When one delivery carries a shipping charge across twenty lines, this decides how it is divided. Whoever receives a delivery can override it for that delivery; here you pick the usual one. Until you pick something, nothing is spread — the same as before this setting existed.

4. 4

   Set when a product counts as low

   The low threshold decides when a product wears a low-stock badge. Be aware of what it does not do today: it warns nobody by itself and the forecast does not read it. It is a visual cue, not an alarm.

5. 5

   Turn on the low-stock alert and give it recipients

   The alert is the part that actually tells somebody. An alert switched on with no address goes to nobody, and the screen says so rather than letting you believe it is working. Put a real inbox in — the person who orders, not the owner's personal address they read on Sundays.

6. 6

   Set the rules for stock counts

   Two decisions here shape every count:

   • How a count can be built — tick which scopes to allow: a category, a supplier, free mode. The ones you leave unticked do not appear when someone creates a count.
   • Lines nobody counted — what approving does with rows left blank. This is the difference between an unfinished count being harmless and it wiping a shelf you never got to.
7. 7

   Choose blind or open counting

   Blind hides the system's expected quantity until the counter confirms the line; open leaves it visible. Blind is slower and produces the honest number, because a counter who can see "10" tends to find ten.

8. 8

   Tune the forecast brakes

   When a product spent much of the period sold out, its sales velocity is measured over the days it actually had stock. The two brakes in this block stop a couple of busy days on an empty shelf from being read as permanent demand.