Key terms
Places
| Term | Meaning | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Business unit | A part of your organisation. Every warehouse belongs to one, and your access to it decides whether you can change its stock. | Bright Home Supplies |
| Warehouse | A building or site where you keep stock. | Main Warehouse (WH-MAIN) |
| Location | A place inside a warehouse: a shelf, bin, zone, receiving bay or cage. Every stock number belongs to one warehouse and one location. | A-01-01: Aisle A, Rack 1, Shelf 1 |
| Location type | An optional word you choose to group locations. | STORAGE, RECEIVING, DISPATCH |
| Default location | The one location per warehouse that sales orders use automatically when they reserve and dispatch stock. | DISPATCH in Main Warehouse |
Products
| Term | Meaning | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Product | Something you buy, sell or store. | Cotton T-shirt |
| Variant | A specific version of a product. Stock is kept separately for each variant. | Cotton T-shirt, Blue / Large |
| SKU | The variant's stock-keeping code, shown in some lists. | TS-BLU-L |
Variants are kept apart
10 Blue / Large and 10 Red / Medium T-shirts are two separate stock numbers. Always choose the right Variant; otherwise you'll add or move stock on the wrong one.
Quantities
| Quantity | Meaning | Example |
|---|---|---|
| On Hand | What's physically in the location right now | 100 on the shelf |
| Reserved | How much of it is promised (sales orders or manual holds). Still on the shelf. | 30 promised |
| Available | What you can still sell or move. Available = On Hand − Reserved. | 70 free |
Changes to stock
| Term | Meaning | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Stock movement | One recorded change: what, where, how much, when and why. Every action creates one. Movements can't be deleted. | "+100 Opening stock at A-01-01" |
| Movement type | The kind of change. See Movement types. | OPENING_STOCK, TRANSFER_OUT |
| Movement reason | Why it happened, chosen from a list. | Found, Damaged, Manual correction |
| Reference code | Your own code that links the change to a document, so you can find it later. | OPENING-2026, RET-0042, SO-1188 |
| Adjustment | A correction up or down with a reason. | −3 Damaged |
| Transfer | Moving stock from one location to another. | 20 from RECV to A-01-01 |
| Reservation | Holding stock for a particular customer or order. | 5 mugs held for "Customer: Ayesha" |
| Release | Giving held stock back so it can be sold again. | Release the 5 mugs |
| Stock count | A stock-take: counting shelves and comparing with the system. | Year-end count Q4-2026 |
| Expected | What the system had when you saved a count line. | 97 |
| Variance | Counted − Expected. Negative = missing; positive = found extra. | Counted 95, expected 97: −2 |
| Post | Make a stock count final. The differences are applied, and it can't be changed again. |