Stock and inventory

The shop reads stock from commercetools Inventory tab on the variant, per supply channel: whether it is in stock and how many units. Configure inventory per variant and channel. Inventory information is used on the webshop; product selection and Cart load require the variant to be in stock for that store.

To inspect stock in Merchant Center, navigate to the product list, select the product, open the Variants tab, select the variant, then open the Inventory tab and choose the warehouse channel for the shop you are checking.

Fields on an inventory

Channel

Channel is the warehouse this stock belongs to. It is not a webshop or a language.

Each shop is linked to one or more warehouses. The website only uses stock from those warehouses.

More than 1 channel is configured when a shop ships from a different warehouse. Example: Nordic shops in Sweden and Finland share one warehouse; shops in Norway use another. The same SKU can then be in stock for Sweden and out of stock for Norway.

When using the Inventory tab, make sure to select and edit channel for the shop you are checking.

Quantity

Do not edit Quantity. It is overwritten several times a day with stock from our warehouses.

Expected delivery

The Expected delivery can be manually filled in case we have an estimate for the restocking date of this product variant. It's used for UI purposes on the website: in the buybox on a PDP, a note inform the user when the product (the variant) is expected back in stock.

• The field lives on the inventory entry of a product variant, per supply channel.
• When the variant is out of stock, the buy box shows “Expected back in stock date” with that date.
• Only a future date is shown. Past or empty dates are hidden.
• If a SKU has several channel entries, the shop uses the earliest date.

Safety stock

Under Custom fields, select inventory-entry-custom-type to add Actual Stock and Safety Stock. The website does not dierctly read those two fields. The shop only uses Quantity, and the field Safety Stock impacts the Quantity field after inventory sync.

Inventory sync means: the inventory is synced directly from the warehouse to commercetools, to that commercetools reflects the actual Warehouse stock. This is done multiple times day. The sync writes Quantity from Actual Stock and Safety Stock:

• If Safety Stock is a positive number, Actual Stock stays the warehouse count and Quantity becomes Actual Stock minus Safety Stock. Example: Actual Stock 100 and Safety Stock 10 → Quantity 90. If Quantity is calculated to be 0 or less, then the variant shows Out of Stock on the website. Use this to hold a reserve so the shop sells out before the warehouse is empty.
• If Safety Stock is -1, the shop keeps selling even when there is no stock. Use this only for products you want to keep available while they are out of stock.