Getting Started with Products & Inventory

Set up locations, numbering and the stock rules, bring in your first products by hand or from a spreadsheet, and give your team the right permissions.

Getting Started with Products & Inventory

Products & inventory is on for every workspace. This guide sets it up in the order that avoids re-doing work: locations and the stock rules first, then products, then people. If a store already sells for you, read this far as Settings, then go to Connecting Shopify or WooCommerce before importing anything — the store import creates the products for you.

What you'll need

• A login with Manage Inventory Settings, Locations & Stores (inventory:config:manage). The seeded Manager role has it; Admin has everything.
• To add products and stock: Manage Products (inventory:products:manage) and Adjust Stock, Transfers & Counts (inventory:stock:adjust). Member has both.
• The Inventory menu in the top bar. If it is missing, the module may be hidden for the workspace — a tenant admin checks Settings (the gear icon) → Workspace → Modules — or your role lacks the keys above.

1. Settings: locations, numbering, what an order does

Inventory → Setup → Inventory Settings (/inventory/settings).

Locations

Every level and every movement names one location, so create them before any stock exists.

1. In Locations, click Location.
2. Enter the name (and a code and address if you like). Click Save.
3. Repeat for each place that holds stock. Use the star to Make default; the default is where stock lands when nothing says otherwise.

A workspace gets a location named Main flagged as the default the first time inventory is used; rename it rather than creating a second one.

Numbering & currency

• SKU prefix — a minted SKU reads PREFIX-00042. Set it once; changing it later does not renumber existing products.
• Currency — blank means the workspace's reporting currency. Set it only when the catalog is priced in another one.
• Default location — overrides the starred location if you prefer to pick it here.

Orders & stock

• Stock leaves the count when the order is — fulfilled (default), paid or created. This is the single most important setting: it says when a sale becomes a deduction.
• Reserve stock when an order is created — on by default. A new order holds its units so available already says they are spoken for.
• Allow stock to go below zero (oversell) — off by default. Off, a sale that would take a level negative is refused with the figures.

Orders a connected store sends are facts: they move stock as the store's authority setting says, even past zero, whatever the oversell switch says.

Reorder arithmetic

The plan computes quantity = demand over (lead time + safety days) + reorder point − (available + incoming), at the sales pace of the window. Set Sales window (days), Default lead time (days), Safety stock (days) and a Default reorder point for products with none of their own. A product or variant can override the point, quantity and lead time.

Click Save at the top right when done.

2. Products

Inventory → Catalog → Products (/inventory/products).

One at a time

1. Click New product (or press N then P anywhere in the app).
2. Fill in Name, SKU (leave blank and one is minted), Barcode, Category, Brand, Supplier, Tags, Short description and Description.
3. Set the Price, Compare-at, Cost and Currency.
4. Set Opening stock and the Stock location it is at. Opening stock is written through the ledger as a receive, so it shows in the product's history.
5. Optionally set a Reorder point, Reorder quantity and Lead time (days).
6. Click Create.

A product created this way has one default variant. Open it to add sizes and colours — see Products, Stock and the Reorder Plan.

From a spreadsheet

1. Click Import and choose a CSV or Excel file.
2. The preview shows each Column, a Sample of its values and the Field it will land in. Columns the importer recognises are pre-filled; when AI assistance is on for the workspace, the rest are suggested too. Change any target, or leave it blank to skip the column.
3. Choose the Stock location a quantity column counts into.
4. Click Import.

Existing SKUs are updated; new ones are created; a quantity column sets stock as a count (the ledger writes the difference), so importing the same file twice does not double the stock.

Export CSV at the top of the page gives you the current catalog with its stock figures, the same shape the importer reads.

3. People

Roles are set under Settings (the gear icon) → Access & security → Roles & Permissions. The seeded roles already carry inventory permissions:

Role	Can
Viewer	View products, stock and orders
Member	Everything a viewer can, plus manage products, adjust / count / transfer stock, create and fulfil orders
Manager	Everything a member can, plus locations, stores and settings
Admin	Everything

A custom role picks from the six keys under Inventory in the permission catalog. Workspaces created before 2026-10-26 keep their seeded roles as they were: an admin adds the inventory keys to Manager, Member and Viewer once (or re-applies the defaults) — see the troubleshooting line below.

Troubleshooting

• "The Inventory menu is not there." Either the module is hidden (Settings (the gear icon) → Workspace → Modules, tenant admins) or the role lacks inventory:products:read. A hidden module's pages still open by direct link and show an amber banner saying so.
• "Members can see products but not add stock." On a workspace created before this feature shipped, the seeded roles were not re-seeded. Open the role under Settings (the gear icon) → Access & security → Roles & Permissions and tick the Inventory keys.
• "Opening stock was refused." The product is set not to track inventory, or the location no longer exists. Check the variant's Track stock box and the Locations list.

Next steps

• Products, Stock and the Reorder Plan — variants, counts, transfers, the ledger and purchase orders from the plan.
• Sales and Purchase Orders — what each order does to stock and when.
• Connecting Shopify or WooCommerce — who owns the count, and the directions.