If you manually manage inventory levels at a location, there are a few ways to ensure your inventory levels stay up to date. You can use a manually managed location to track all of your inventory or a subset of your inventory. For example, you can use manually managed inventory for any of the options below:
All of my inventory is stored in one location and I don't use any warehouse management system (WMS) to track my inventory levels or
Most of my inventory is tracked via my WMS but I also store inventory at our headquarters and I want to keep track of those levels at our HQ or
Most of my inventory is tracked via my WMS but I also work with a partner who doesn't use a WMS.
Before getting started, first make sure you have a manually managed location setup.
👉 You can read more about Manual locations here:
Adding inventory manually
After creating a manually-managed location, you’ll be prompted to add baseline inventory numbers. You’ll be able to select an item from your catalog, and break down your inventory by “On Hand”, “Available”, and “Reserved”. You can default to updated today, but if your information is outdated, you can update numbers from a certain point.
From here, your inventory numbers will be automatically updated by POs, GRNs and Orders to or from that location. You can also manually update the inventory if you ever need to reset your inventory levels.
Adding an inventory label to your SKU
To ensure a SKU appears in the Inventory section of your account, it must be labeled as Inventory. This allows you to only see the SKUs where you're actively tracking inventory levels within the Inventory section.
Here’s how to add the label:
Go to Catalog from the left-hand navigation.
Search for the SKU you want to update.
Click the Label button next to the SKU.
Select Inventory from the label options.
Click Save to apply the changes. You'll now see the inventory label added to the SKU page above the Details section. You should also see an automatic Saved notification in the top-left confirming the label has been saved.
Once labeled, the SKU will show up in the Inventory section of your account as well as within the Inventory tab in the Catalog section of your account.
Updating inventory via GRN
For inventory at a manually managed location, you will need to use the Goods Received Note (GRN) to move inventory to an Available status. With the GRN, you can choose to upload a confirmation document such as shipping receipt or packing slip. There are no requirements for the document you use so you can use whatever confirmation document applies to your process.
In this video, we'll walk you through updating your inventory via a GRN. In this case, the GRN has been created from a PO but this process applies to many other documents such as Transfers, in your account.
Note: You don't have to first create a PO to create a GRN. These can be created as standalone documents.
You can also create multiple GRNs for each PO. For example, you might want to create a separate GRN for each shipment.