Channel rules and ring-fences
Decide how much of your stock each channel is allowed to show.
Overview
Channel rules let a channel show fewer units than you have, on purpose: safety stock, a share of stock, a maximum listed quantity, or zero below a level. Ring-fences keep units for one channel only.
Why use it
- Protect against overselling when channels update slowly.
- Split stock between channels.
- Keep stock for your own website.
Before you begin
- Channel locations are set up and linked to warehouses.
Channel stock rules
Rules let a channel show less than you actually have, on purpose. Open Settings → Stock → Channel rules. A rule can apply to the whole company, a channel, a channel location, a product category, a product tag, or a single item, optionally on one channel only. The most specific rule wins.
- Safety stock: a number of units and/or a percentage kept back from the channel.
- Share: the percentage of the remaining stock the channel may sell.
- Max listed: the most units the channel will ever be shown.
- End when: show zero once total stock falls to this number or below.
- Sync on/off: stop sending stock to this channel for the items the rule covers.
How a channel's number is worked out
The calculation always follows the same order:
Available stock
of the warehouses that feed this location
− Safety stock
units or % kept back
− Ring-fences
units kept for other channels
× Share
the channel's percentage
Cap at max listed
never show more than this
End when
show 0 at or below this
Example: 100 available − 10% safety stock (10) − 20 ring-fenced for Shopify = 70 × 50% share = 35 shown on Flipkart
Ring-fences
A ring-fence keeps a fixed number of an item's units in a warehouse for one channel only. Every other channel fed by that warehouse sees that many fewer. Use it to protect stock for your own website, for example. Set ring-fences from the item page's What each channel shows card.
Why does a channel show this number?
On the item page, What each channel shows lists each channel location with its number and the steps that produced it: which warehouses fed it, which rule applied, and what was taken off and why.
Changes made directly on a channel
If someone edits a quantity in Shopify admin, Seller Central, the Flipkart panel or WooCommerce, O2M picks up the change (or click Read now in Channel locations), records it, for example "Changed on Amazon: 10 → 15", and passes it on to your other channels.
Important A change of 10 units or more made on a channel raises an alert, so unexpected edits do not go unnoticed.