Products & Inventory
Stock alerts and safety quantities
Set a safety quantity and calculate a reorder point from consumption. Find low-stock products on Product Alerts, in a daily notice and on the Stock levels card.
A safety quantity is the buffer you want to keep in stock. With automatic calculation on, StockBold combines your usage and expected lead time to calculate a reorder point and expected reorder date for each product.
A product is low on stock when its available stock—stock on hand less units held for supplier claims—is at or below its reorder point, or when its reorder date arrives. It is flagged for everyone who can see it, unless they have muted it.
With automatic calculation off, the reorder point and reorder date are not calculated or used. A product with a Manual Safety Stock Amount is low on stock when its available stock is at or below that amount. A product without one raises no alert.
Set the safety quantity on the product. Nothing else is needed for alerts: every product is included, and there is no list to add it to.
Set the safety quantity
- Open Catalog, then View Products.
- Click the product.
- Select Product Page in the preview that opens.
- Select Edit product and scroll to Stock levels. Alternatively, open the Reorder Point tab and select Edit parameters to open the form directly at Stock levels.
- Enter Expected Lead Time in days. The reorder point includes the stock you will use while waiting for the supplier, so an incorrect lead time moves the alert to the wrong day.
- Enter a figure in Manual Safety Stock Amount if you want a fixed buffer. If that is all you need, stop here and save.
- Turn on Enable Auto Safety Stock Calculation to calculate the buffer from your usage.
- Set the Months of Safety Stock slider to the number of months of stock to hold as a buffer.
- Set the Calculation Period (Months) slider to the number of past months of usage to average. Both sliders accept 1 to 12 months.
- Save the product.
Edit product and Edit parameters appear only for roles allowed to manage products. If you do not see them, ask an administrator to make the change or give you product editing rights.
How the figures are calculated
With automatic calculation on, the safety quantity stored against the product is the higher of the calculated amount and your Manual Safety Stock Amount. The manual figure is a floor, not a cap. The reorder point and expected reorder date use that higher figure, so raising the manual figure above the calculated amount makes the reorder date and alert come earlier.
Usage counts Stock Out movements, Assembly Out movements—components used up when an assembly is completed—and Adjustment movements with a negative quantity. Goods received against a purchase order, transfers, found inventory, initial stock and defective units that leave stock against a supplier claim are not usage and never raise the figures.
Only whole past months count because the current month is not finished. The total is divided by the full number of months in the Calculation Period, so a month with no usage pulls the average down.
Safety stock is monthly usage multiplied by Months of Safety Stock. Daily usage is monthly usage divided by 30. The reorder point is the higher of the calculated safety stock and your Manual Safety Stock Amount, plus daily usage multiplied by your expected lead time.
Round safety stock result, the switch under the sliders, does not change the safety quantity: it is rounded to whole units either way. The switch rounds the average monthly usage shown in the form preview and in the Monthly Usage column on the alerts page.
Saving a change to any reorder setting—the lead time, cover days, manual amount, automatic calculation switch or its sliders—recalculates the product's figures straight away. If a calculation ran for your organisation less than a minute earlier, the Reorder Point tab says the figures will update within a minute.
New stock movements and order approvals are picked up by the regular calculation, which runs about once an hour. If a recalculation cannot run, the product is still saved and the next hourly run updates it.
The Stock levels card
The product's page, on its Overview tab, and the Quick Preview show a Stock levels card. It shows stock on hand, Safety Stock, Reorder Point and Average usage of the last full months.
A label describes the stock level. A gauge underneath marks the safety stock and reorder point, with a line for stock on hand. The same label appears beside On hand in the side panel of the product's page.
| Label | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Healthy | The stock on hand is above the reorder point, or above the safety stock when there is no reorder point. |
| Below reorder point | At or below the reorder point, but still above the safety stock. |
| Below safety stock | At or below the safety stock. |
A level of 0 counts as no level. With no safety stock and no reorder point, the card shows no label or gauge, only the line With no safety stock and no reorder point there is no level to compare the stock with. While automatic calculation is off, Reorder Point and Average usage show a dash.
Mute a product
- Open Inventory, then Alerts List. The page is headed Product Alerts.
- Go to the Muted Products tab.
- Choose a product using the product selector beside the heading.
- Select Mute.
You can also use the bell button on the product's own page, the bell in the Alerts column of the products list, or the bell in the Alerts column of View Inventory. The Alerts column in View Inventory is hidden until you choose to show it.
On the product's page and in the products list, the bell has three looks:
| Bell | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Yellow | You get low-stock alerts for this product. The tooltip reads Low-stock alerts are on: click to mute them. |
| Grey, crossed out | You muted it. The tooltip reads Low-stock alerts are muted: click to unmute them. |
| Plain grey | The product raises no alerts at all: it has no automatic calculation and no manual safety stock. On the product's page the bell is then greyed out. |
To unmute, select the bell again, choose Unmute low-stock alerts in the More actions menu of the product's page, or select Unmute on the Muted Products tab.
Muting is personal. A product you mute leaves only your own Requiring Attention tab and notifications; everyone else who can see it is still alerted. A member limited to some departments sees, and is alerted about, only the products of those departments.
Find products requiring attention
The Requiring Attention tab on Product Alerts lists every active product you can see that is low on stock. Products you muted are left out.
With automatic calculation on, a product is listed when its available stock—stock on hand less units held for supplier claims—is at or below its Reorder Point, or its expected reorder date has passed. With automatic calculation off, it is listed when available stock is at or below its Manual Safety Stock Amount. The Reorder Point column then shows that amount, marked manual safety stock, and the columns calculated from usage stay empty.
The On Hand column still shows everything on hand. When supplier claims hold some of it, a line under the figure shows how many units are available and how many are held.
The tab has two groups. To order holds products that are low on stock with no purchase order. Already on order holds products with a purchase order on its way: an approved order, or one awaiting approval, with a line for the product that has not been fully delivered yet.
A draft order or an order that was not approved does not count, so the product stays in To order. A product short on hand that is already on order has no reorder date yet, but is still listed in Already on order. Within each group, the most urgent product by expected end of stock date is listed first.
Daily low-stock notices
Once a day, StockBold tells you in the app and by email about products you can see that have just become low, including the quantity on hand and any pending order. Each product is announced once when it becomes low. If it goes back above its reorder point and later drops again, it is announced again in the next daily notice.
If it stays low, you are reminded after 7 days, or after the number of days set in Settings, then Organization, under Low-stock alerts (Remind again after (days)).
To stop these notifications, open Settings, then Notifications, and clear the In-app or Email box on the Low stock row. Both are on unless you turn them off. The email shows no money.
Stock Forecast
The dashboard's Stock Forecast card lists products with automatic calculation on that are expected to run out within 30 days, or are already out of stock, soonest first. Each row says how long stock should last, for example Runs out in ~12 days, calculated from average monthly usage and available stock.
Units held for supplier claims do not count. A product whose remaining stock is all held for claims is shown as out of stock.
Once a product's reorder date has passed, its row is marked Reorder overdue and moved to the top. It is marked On order instead when a purchase order is pending, using the same rule as the Already on order group. A row marked Recalculating has received stock since the last calculation; the next hourly run updates it.
Products with automatic calculation off are not listed. When some are off, the card says under the list how many of your products use automatic calculation out of the total—for example, 12 of 37 products use automatic calculation—and that the others are not included. When none is due, it says how many products with automatic calculation it checked. Unlike alerts, the card is not personal: it covers every product you can see.
Products that raise no alerts
With automatic calculation on, the product is judged on its reorder point and reorder date. These need recorded consumption in the completed months being averaged or a Manual Safety Stock Amount. The reorder point moves with usage and lead time.
A product with automatic calculation off and no manual amount, or with it on, no recorded usage yet (no stock-outs, assembly consumption or negative adjustments) and no manual amount, never reaches the Requiring Attention tab and never appears in the notifications, however low its stock is.
Product Alerts says how many of your products have neither automatic calculation nor a manual safety stock, with a View products link. On the products list, the Only products without low-stock alerts filter finds them.
Such a product's own page says Low stock alerts are off for this product: it has no automatic calculation and no manual safety stock, with a Turn on automatic calculation button for people allowed to manage products. Check those products by hand rather than waiting for an alert.
Turn automatic calculation off or on
The expected reorder date and end of stock date are no longer calculated. The product leaves the dashboard's Stock Forecast, and its page and View Inventory show those dates as not calculated. Its reorder point and average usage are also shown as not calculated and no longer raise alerts.
From then on, the product raises low-stock alerts only from your Manual Safety Stock Amount. Without one, it leaves the Requiring Attention tab and low-stock notifications.
To turn automatic calculation on without opening the product form, open the product's Reorder Point tab. While it is off, a notice says Automatic calculation is off for this product, and Reorder By and Stock End Date read Not calculated.
People allowed to manage products get a Turn on automatic calculation button. Everyone else is told that someone who can edit products can turn it on. The button switches on Enable Auto Safety Stock Calculation, leaves every other setting as it is, and calculates the dates straight away, or within a minute if a calculation has just run.
A product with no recorded usage in the months being averaged still gets no dates. The figures read Needs stock-out history, and a notice says no usage has been recorded in the last full months; the current month is not included.