Stock Takes vs Stock Adjustments

Stock Takes & Stock adjustments perform very similar functions but both work slightly differently.

The key difference between the two as follows:

• Stock Adjustments are used to increment/decrement stock; eg add 2 units or remove 2 units
• Stock Takes are used to input the total number of units on hand

Stock takes will store a date against the inventory which can be used in the Stock Take Cycles

Stock adjustments have a reason associated with them. There is a default reason called "Stock Take" when this reason is selected, this will also set the date for the stock take, any other reason will not adjust the stock take date.

Negative Stocks & Zeroing Down

Consider the following scenario

• There are 10 units of a product available to sell (Free Stock)
• A customer buys 5 units of this product
• When picking the order, none of the stock could be found

There are 10 units "On Hand"

• 5 available to purchase (Free Stock)
• 5 allocated to the sale

But there isn't actually any stock at all. Perhaps the items were damaged or a miscount took place sometime in the past.

The first thing to consider is you don't want any more sales for this product so you need to deduct the available stock. This could be done with a stock adjustment, reducing the number by 5.

There are now 5 units "On Hand"

• 0 available to purchase (Free Stock)
• 5 allocated to the sale

The free quantity becomes 0 but the quantity on hand is still 5 because of the stock allocated to the sale.

The sale is now cancelled or credited

There are still 5 units "On Hand"

• 5 available to purchase (Free Stock)
• 0 allocated to the sale

The issue here is when the sales order is cancelled/credited the free stock will go back to 5 as the allocated stock is released.

This could be fixed with a further stock adjustment but results in additional work and more chance of error.

The alternative solution

Instead of performing the stock adjustment when the items were identified as missing a stock take should be used instead, let's go back to our starting point:

There are 10 units "On Hand"

• 5 available to purchase (Free Stock)
• 5 allocated to the sale

A stock take is performed on the product and the On Hand quantity is entered as 0, now we have the following:

There are 0 units "On Hand"

• -5 available to purchase (Free Stock)
• 5 allocated to the sale

The sale is cancelled and the 5 allocated units go back into stock, instead of becoming available, they return the negative stock to 0 which is the intended result.