Key ideas
The ideas behind every warehouse screen: stock states, the stock ledger, backorders and document numbers.
Overview
The key ideas are the terms used on every warehouse screen: items, stock states, the stock ledger, how O2M chooses the warehouse for an order, and document numbers.
Why use it
- Read every warehouse screen correctly.
- Understand when units become sellable and when they leave.
- Recognise document numbers at a glance.
Items
An item is one thing you can count on a shelf: a product without variants, or one variant of a product (for example, a T-shirt in size M, colour blue). Items come from your Master Products; you never create them separately.
Stock states
Every unit you physically hold is in exactly one state. Together the states make up on hand, the number of units in the building.
On hand (physically in the warehouse)
can be sold
committed
being checked
not sellable
expired, recalled, not found
kept aside by hand
Tracked, not on hand
Incoming
ordered from a supplier
In transit
on the way between warehouses
- Available: free to sell. Your channels are fed from this number.
- Held for orders: promised to an order that has not left the warehouse.
- QC hold: received or returned, waiting for a quality check.
- Damaged: not sellable. It can be refurbished, returned to the supplier or scrapped.
- Quarantine: taken off sale: expired, part of a held lot, or not found when picking.
- Reserved: kept aside by hand, for example for a B2B customer or an event.
Two more numbers are tracked beside on hand: incoming units on purchase orders, and units in transit between your own warehouses.
Important Stock on hand never goes below zero. When an order arrives for more units than are available, O2M accepts it and records the missing units as a backorder, which fills itself, oldest order first, as soon as stock arrives.
The stock ledger
Every change to stock is written as one line in the stock ledger: what changed, how many units, from which state to which, in which warehouse and bin, why, by whom and when. Every number in O2M can be traced back to the lines that produced it.
Which warehouse ships an order
- 1If the channel chose a location (a Shopify or Flipkart location, or an Amazon supply source), the warehouse linked to that location ships it.
- 2Otherwise the warehouse nearest to the customer's PIN code is chosen. When two are equally near, the one with more of the order's stock is used.
- 3If one warehouse can supply every line, the whole order ships from it. If not, each line ships from its nearest warehouse with stock.
- 4Units no linked warehouse has become a backorder.
The order page shows Ships from for every line. Use Move to warehouse to change it before the order ships.
Document numbers
Warehouse documents are numbered per Indian financial year, for example PO-2627-00001 for the first purchase order of 2026-27. Change the prefixes in Settings → Stock → Stock settings → Document numbers.
| Prefix | Document | Prefix | Document |
|---|---|---|---|
| PO | Purchase order | PL | Picklist |
| GRN | Goods receipt | SHP | Parcel |
| RTV | Return to vendor | INV | Tax invoice |
| TRF | Transfer | MF | Manifest |
| ADJ | Adjustment | RET | Return inward |
| CC | Cycle count | CLM | Claim |
| KIT | Kitting order | WO | Wholesale order |
| PLT | Pallet |