Introduction to Inventory Management
Inventory Management for Commerce helps merchants manage inventory across one or more websites and physical or virtual product locations. It provides tools in the Admin and command-line interface to configure inventory, track on-hand and aggregate salable quantities, protect inventory during checkout, and support order fulfillment. You can use Inventory Management for a single source or a multi-source network that includes warehouses, stores, pickup locations, drop shippers, and other fulfillment locations.
Ways to use Inventory Management
- Admin: Set inventory options and generate inventory reports.
- Command-line interface: Run setup commands and apply inventory changes in the background.
- Configuration scope: Configure inventory settings globally, per source, or per product.
Key features
Inventory Management features include:
- Different configurations for merchants whose inventory originates from a single source or from multiple sources
- Stocks for tracking aggregated salable quantities across assigned sources
- Concurrent checkout protection
- Shipment-matching algorithms that support fulfillment recommendations based on distance or priority
Basic terminology
It is important to understand the following terms as you work with Inventory Management:
Sources represent physical locations that store and ship available products. See Stocks and sources for examples and diagrams. (Any location can be designated as a source for virtual products.)
Stocks map a sales channel (currently limited to websites) to source locations and on-hand inventory. A stock can map to multiple sales channels, but a sales channel can be assigned to only one stock.
Aggregate Salable Quantity is the total virtual inventory that can be sold through a sales channel. The amount is calculated across all sources assigned to a stock.
Reservations track deductions from the salable quantity as customers add products to carts and complete checkout. When an order ships, the reservation clears and deducts the shipped amounts from specific source inventory quantities.