Tracking quantities of products sold is key for businesses who sell products in addition to delivering services. This article explains how to set up your products for stock control.
In this guide, we will cover how to:
- Adjust your stock levels.
- Set the threshold for ordering alerts.
- Set your ideal stock levels
- View a history of any stock adjustments.
- Taking stock and reporting on current stock levels.
This feature may not be available on your current plan. Find out how to upgrade in our How to change your Timely plan guide.
Adjust your stock levels
You can adjust the stock level for any product at any time, this is perfect for adding new stock after receiving an order, or making any adjustments after a stock take. To adjust stock levels of multiple products at once, you can use our bulk stock adjustment feature.
To adjust the stock levels of an individual product:
1. Head to Setup > Products
2. Click the Adjust button next to a product. This will open a pop up for you to make your stock adjustment. Choose the location you want to adjust stock for:
You can choose what kind of adjustment you'd like to make:
- Set stock level: Set a new stock level
- Add stock: Add x amount of stock
- Reduce stock: Reduce stock by x amount
Once you've made your adjustment, choose an adjustment reason and click Save. Too easy!
Note: You can also adjust stock levels by choosing 'Edit' from the three dots on the right hand side and scrolling down to Stock levels on the Edit product page.
Set threshold alerts
Once products are in stock, you can set an alert for when a product quantity drops below a certain level.
- From the Setup > Products page, Edit a product and head to the Stock section (as above):
- If a product is Unlimited then the option to add an alert won't be shown (see above).
- As soon as a stock level is recorded, you can adjust the level in the Alert field:
- If you'd like to be able to sell a product, even when the system says it's out of stock march the checkbox "Allow product to be sold even when it's out of stock"
- To be notified by email when stock levels drop below this threshold check the Send emails when available stock reaches the alert limit? check box.
- Click Save to apply any changes.
When the product reaches the alert threshold, this will send the account holder an email and a notification (in Timely):
Set your ideal stock levels
Once products are in stock, you can set the ideal level that you would like to maintain. Having your ideal level set will allow you to create new stock orders with just a few clicks as Timely will know which products need topping up, and also exactly how many to order to get them back to a healthy level.,
- From the Setup > Products page, Edit a product and head to the Stock control section (as above):
- Enter the stock level which you would like to maintain in the Ideal field:
- Click Save to apply any changes.
When a product reaches goes under the ideal level, it will show up when you select the Top up filter when creating a new stock order. When you choose to add a product with an ideal quantity set, we will set the order quantity to the amount required to get your current stock levels back to that ideal quantity, magic!
View stock change history
Every stock adjustment action will be recorded and viewable through the product history. The staff member who made these changes will also be included.
Go to the History section when editing a product:
Whenever stock levels are changed, associated sales will be checked and the stock levels will be offset against these manual adjustments (see above).
When you add a product to an invoice, then the stock level will be decreased accordingly once the sale is completed. Product sales will not show up as stock adjustments in the History.
Reporting on stock levels
When it comes to tracking your stock levels, you have a couple of reporting options. These reports can be found by heading to the Reports tab:
Stock levels report
To view a list of all of your retail products and their current levels, choose the Stock levels report (in the Financial reports section). You can then select a location and click the View report button to generate the report.
The report will show you a summary of your current stock levels across your locations, as well as a detailed list of products. You will be able to view the # of stock available, the alert threshold, as well as the prices and value of stock on hand.
This report can only be run for today's date, so it's not possible to view this report for a past date. We recommend regularly exporting this report in its current state, if you require that information for future list e.g. run the report on the first day of every month.
Stock movement report
The stock movement report allows you to track any changes in stock levels within a certain date range.
This gives you a list of all your retail products and internal stock, then details their starting level and any Increases or Decreases during that date range:
