The low inventory report lists all products which are low on inventory based on minimum stock levels (or re-order thresholds) defined against each product. It can be found under Products > Low inventory report.
Minimum stock levels and reorder quantities
A product's minimum stock level is the minimum quantity to be kept on hand at any given time. It is defined on a warehouse level - so a product can have different minimum stock levels depending on where it is stocked.
Products can also be assigned a reorder quantity.
A reorder quantity is the minimum amount that must be purchased from your vendor. It is used when purchasing items that can only be bought in batches - so if even only one unit is required to meet the minimum stock level, the reorder quantity may indicate a whole batch must be bought.
This field is used only when placing orders for items on the low stock report.
Both the minimum stock level and reorder quantity can be updated on products individually, in bulk on the sales list, or through a product import.
Note: If a product's current on hand inventory is equal to or above its minimum stock level (or the product has no minimum stock level set!), it will not be displayed on the low inventory report.
Understanding the low inventory report
Each product on the low inventory report will display the following figures:
| Column Name | Description |
|---|---|
| In stock | The total number of items in stock. |
| Allocated | Total number of items allocated to sales and fulfilled to goods-out notes. |
| On hand | The total number of items available to sell (in stock quantity less allocated quantity). |
| Open SO | The number of items on sales orders that have not yet been allocated or fulfilled. This excludes items on the "canceled" status. |
| Open SC | The number of items on sales credits that have not yet been received into stock or written off. |
| Overage |
The open sales quantity, less the open sales credit quantity, less the on hand quantity, i.e. how many more items need to be purchased to fulfill all open sales. Overage can be negative - if negative, it indicates there is free stock, i.e. stock which can be allocated to further orders. |
| On PO | Any items that are due in on purchase orders that have not yet been received. |
| Minimum stock level | The minimum quantity to be maintained on hand. |
| Reorder Qty | The batch sizes that must be ordered. |
See also: understanding stock levels
Creating purchase orders using the low inventory report
The low inventory report can be used to create purchase orders for all items which are low on inventory - i.e. products whose on hand stock level is less than their minimum stock level.
Prerequisites
To use this functionality, products must be assigned both a minimum stock level and a vendor (supplier):
Read more about assigning vendors to products here.
To produce a purchase order from the low stock report it must be filtered by:
- Warehouse
- Vendor (supplier)
Using the report
Once filtered, the report provides an estimate of the number of items to order, using the minimum stock level and reorder quantity.
These figures can be manually edited in order to take seasonal and other forecasts into consideration:
There is also a 'Zero all order quantities' button on the top left-hand side, to set all quantities to 0 in case only a few rows need to be updated.
Calculation for re-ordering
Quantity to be reordered = Minimum stock level + Overage - Quantity 'On PO'
Once the order quantity has been calculated, it will be increased until it is a multiple of the re-order quantity (batch size).
Example
Consider the following:
Product A has 14 units in stock, all of which are allocated, leaving an on hand figure of 0.
There are 7 units on open sales orders and none on open sales credits.
This gives an overage figure of (open sales orders - on hand level = 7 - 0 =) 7.
The minimum stock level is 30, and there are 20 units on open purchase orders.
This means the quantity to be reordered is (30 + 7 - 20 =) 17.
However the reorder quantity is 10, meaning you can only purchase batches of 10. So this must be rounded up to the nearest multiple of 10, which is 20.