How Inventory fits together
Where each Inventory number comes from, what moves it, and which other pages read it: quotes, job cards, ordering, your POS and the network view.
Last updated 2 September 2026
Products → Inventory looks like one table, but little of it is typed in by hand. It is assembled from your point of sale, your open jobs and your purchase orders. For the everyday how-to, see parts, stock and ordering.
Where each number comes from
- Rows from your till come from a connected point of sale and cannot be edited here: your till owns them, and the next refresh would overwrite a hand edit.
- Your own rows, added in the Your own stock card, behave the same everywhere else: same columns, same maths, same filters, same Add to job. They carry a Workshop tag in the Item column so you can tell them apart at a glance, and if you have a till connected, a Workshop only filter narrows the table to just them.
- An empty count means unknown, not zero, and so does a reading more than 24 hours old.
- Recheck re-reads one item now, Check for changes pulls what is new across the catalogue, and Re-read everything goes through it from scratch.
Zero means you have none, and shows as out of stock. Unknown means nobody has looked. Only zero counts as a shortfall, so an uncounted item never triggers a reorder.
What booked and available actually count
- In stock is the raw figure
- Booked is the quantity committed to jobs still open, the one column a POS cannot show you
- Available is in stock minus booked. It can go negative: the shelf holds two, three jobs have claimed one each, so somebody has to order
- A part becomes booked two ways: Add to job from the table or the scanner, and Send to ordering on an approved quote, where you tick which lines are parts. A quote line alone does not book stock, and labour lines are never orderable
- The availability filter: free, low at your reorder point, out at zero or below, stock unknown
- Select a row's Booked figure to see which jobs claimed it. A location filter narrows in stock only; booked stays shop-wide
What moves a count on its own
Your own counts move at the two moments stock really moves:
- Finishing a job draws stock down. The first time a job reaches Ready for pickup or Done, its current quote's lines come off your counts, matched by SKU; a line without one moves nothing. Once per booking: re-finishing never double counts, and un-finishing puts nothing back.
- A goods receipt puts stock back. Booking in a delivery adds the units you marked as arriving in good condition to your main stock. Damaged or wrong items add nothing.
The stock check
The Stock check card, under the Inventory table, is where Velobook tells you its numbers and your POS's have stopped agreeing. It reads only: nothing on it changes a count, here or in your POS. It looks for three things.
- Promised beyond stock. More units are committed to open jobs than your POS says are on hand. Somebody is going to be short, so re-count it or take it off a job
- Delivery not counted yet. You booked a delivery into your POS and Velobook has not re-read that item since, so the figure on screen is simply older than the delivery. It corrects itself on the next read
- Number has gone cold. Nothing has re-read this item for over a day, so Velobook shows it as unknown. All of them cold at once usually means the connection to your POS, not your stock
The check compares Velobook against what your POS last told us. It has no way to see your shelves, so it cannot catch a miscount, a sale rung up on the till, or anything that walked out the door. Stock you keep yourself is not checked either: it only ever exists in Velobook, so there is no second number to compare it against.
Rows from your till are left alone: the till counts down on a sale and up when you receive into it, so a second movement from here would count the same part twice. The one exception you switch on yourself: Shopify shops can have booked-in deliveries added to their Shopify counts, and that only ever adds units. See point of sale.
Every surface Inventory reaches
- A booking's Quote tab and the job card parts strip. A part you search for shows the POS's raw figure; on the quote, the badge switches to the allocation-aware one. Ticking Chargeable adds the part to the draft quote at your catalogue price. See quotes.
- Ordering and Suppliers. Committed parts gather on the Ordering board, bundled by supplier, and become purchase orders. Sending one records who you buy that part from and what you last paid, which is where the Supplier and Cost columns come from.
- Your connected POS. It supplies names, SKUs, product types, prices and stock levels, refreshed in the background. See point of sale.
- Catalogue Copilot. Rewrites listing copy for the same products, and touches no counts or prices. See Catalogue Copilot.
- A network parent's Inventory search. A cross-shop "which shop has one" lookup, on the same rules. See running a multi-shop network.
The builders keep a separate catalogue
The Wheel builder and Bike builder do not read Inventory. Their hubs, rims, frames and groupsets are a separate per-shop catalogue with a stock label you set by hand. Picking one books nothing. A submitted build lands as lines on a quote, and reaches Ordering from there.
The one time stock moves because of Velobook
- If a customer pays for the whole job through Velobook, the sale sent to your till would sit parked forever and your stock would never come down for that job
- Switch on Close sales paid in Velobook in your POS settings (under Integrations, next to your POS connection) and the sale is closed rather than parked. Your POS then draws the stock down itself, once, as on any counter sale
- Part-paid jobs keep parking, so the till can take the balance
- Off until you turn it on
What Velobook will not do
- It does not edit your POS's stock numbers on its own: no reserving units, no adjusting counts, no pushing figures back uninvited
- The one write you can opt into is Shopify's Add received stock to Shopify, which adds booked-in deliveries and never removes anything
- Booked and available always match the jobs open now