Managing Inventory

Basics

• All products you sell or stock should be entered in Linnworks.
• Each product and its variation has its own, unique SKU (Stock Keeping Unit), or in Linnworks we quite often refer to it as Item Number.
• Each product has stock level states:
  • Physical stock level – how many you actually have in stock.
  • On order – how many are expected to be received from supplier following placed purchase order.
  • Minimum Level – to alert the system of the minimum threshold for the stock level.
  • Available – this is dynamically calculated value i.e. Physical stock level minus in open orders.
• Stock level gets deducted from following actions
  • Sale - Shipping as part of the order. The stock level will only be deducted once the order has been shipped.
  • Resent – when an item gets lost in the post or the customer requires a replacement.
  • Scrapping of stock item – damaged products must be scrapped and recorded in the system as scrapped
  • Direct adjustment – you change the stock level manually using Stock Adjustment screen
• Stock value – the system is capable of keeping track of the stock value. Stock value is a dynamically tracked value of the stock – it is determined from the cost of the products you have purchased to populate the stock level and any direct adjustment. This is NOT PurchasePrice x Quantity.
• Stock level is being added from following actions:
  • Purchase – when a purchase order is placed, On Order level will be increased. Once the purchase order is marked as delivered/partially delivered – level on order will be moved to actual stock level.
  • Returns – when an item is returned to you by the customer and you wish to place the item back in stock for resale.
  • Direct adjustment – you change the stock level manually using Stock Adjustment screen.
  • Stock In – you can book stock in when as you receive it from the supplier.
• Each stock may have multiple stock level – the concept of multiple locations allows you to have multiple stock levels for the same product. Each location in effect tracks a stock level independently.
• You can have stock item composition (packs, bunches, combinations, BOM products)– a stock item which consists of or includes other stock items.

Managing Inventory

You can search, browse, add, delete and edit stock items from a single screen located in Inventory Control > My Inventory

You can also adjust inventory levels, value and find stock which is running low from the same screen.

Add New Products

• Go to Inventory Control > My Inventory
• You can add new products by clicking the top row. The SKU will be generated automatically for you. By default it will create numerically incremental SKU staring from 100001, however if you SKU numbers are mixed up with character based SKUs the system will generate arbitrary character based SKU like AAA-BBB-CCC
• Press Tab to move the cursor to Item Title
• You can specify stock level, stock value, minimum level at the point of entry of the new stock item. Please note - you will only be able to see the stock level related fields if you have selected a Location from the drop down box in Show Location filter.

• Once the product is added you can enter more detailed info by editing the item.
• Alternatively you can click New Item button and enter the detailed product description.

Notes:

• You can import batch stock items from a comma delimited file using data import utility.
• It is possible to create stock items from unlinked order.
• It is possible to import new stock items for eBay listings, Amazon inventory, PlayTrade, Magento inventory (where facility is available)

Search Products

Go to Inventory Control > My Inventory Enter the search criteria in the search box and click Find Search will check SKU / Item Title / Variation Group / Barcode and display any matches based on the following Search criteria <= 2 characters, eg co (Fig 1.1) Return only all matches (SKU / Item Title / Variation Group / Barcode) that start with the search criteria Search criteria => 3 characters, eg cod (Fig 1.2) Return all matches (SKU / Item Title / Variation Group / Barcode) that contain the search criteria

Fig 1.1  Fig 1.2

Edit Stock Item details

• Go to Inventory Control > My Inventory
• Find the item you would like to edit.
• Highlight the stock item in the grid and click Edit Item

Description

Basic stock item details and item image.

Postage Definition

 Here you can specify default postage details, weight and measurements of the package. The default Postal service defined here is for use with a custom order script to auto assign shipping based on a bespoke ruleset. An example Order Script to assign shipping can be found here.

Linked Titles

 This section allows you to manage Linked Titles for the given stock items. Linked title is a list of listing names which will automatically linked to this stock item when an order is downloaded from a channel (eBay, Amazon, PlayTrade etc).

To add new linked title, click on the top row, enter the SKU (channel sku or custom label), Item Title and Source as EBAY, AMAZON, PLAYTRADE etc. To apply the changes hit Enter.

There will be a number of titles that have already been downloaded with order data from a channel. The easiest way to add already existing title click Add From Existing button, and double click on the title you want to add.

To delete a Linked Title hit Del button.

Channel SKU Mapping

List of SKUs that will link to this stock item for orders downloaded from a channel. This table is also for Inventory synchronization. To add new linked Channel SKU, click on the top row and enter the SKU details including Source and Subsource.

The Subsource for Amazon is a Merchant Name, for eBay is an account identifier i.e. EBAY0 or EBAY1 etc, for PlayTrade is a the Merchant Name. This is not applicable to websites and Megento integration as the Source will identify the exact channel uniquely, for example MAGENTO1 or WEBSITE2 etc.

When Channel SKU is used for inventory synchronization, the last updated status will be recorded for each record. You can review the last status of the submitted inventory data to the channel will be available under Show/Hide Status.

To delete a Channel SKU record hit Del button.

Suppliers

List of suppliers and supplier associated details. To add a supplier click Add New, then select the supplier from the list by double clicking the supplier. You can then edit the details such as Supplier code, barcode, lead time (the time it normally takes to source the product from a supplier), Purchase Price from the supplier by typing the values directly into the grid.

At least one Supplier must be a default supplier – i.e. your preferred supplier.

To delete a Supplier from the list hit Del button.

Locations Bin/Rack

You can add a list of locations for the selected item. The main purpose for entering location is to identify the item's storage identifier such as Bin/Rack for every location.

Extended Properties

Extended properties is a list of custom values that can further describe the stock item. This table is used to create Specification tables when an item is listed on a channel using Linnlive service or create Item Specifics attributes.

Each record in the extended property has a type (predefined in the system), Name of the property and a value. To add new extended property click on the top row, type Name, value and select Type from the drop down list.

Item Stats

Items Statistics are available for the last 30 days

Stock	Supply	Due PO	Also Sold	Returns	Scrap	Sold Stats	Audit Trail

Product Categories

Product categories in Linnworks are used to categorize your inventory into manageable groups. Product Categories are used for reporting and filtering purposes only and have no bearing on any listings on any of your selling channels. Linnworks has one level of categories only (no multi-level hierarchies are allowed as such). If you want to implement multiple hierarchies for mapping purposes use Hierarchy1 > Hierarchy 1.1 > Hierarchy 1.1.1 in the name of the category (example Clothing > Shoes > Adidas)

To create new product categories:

• Go to Inventory tab
• Product Categories
• Type new name on the first line on the grid
• Press Enter

To Delete product category

• Go to Inventory tab 
• Product Categories 
• Select the category you want to delete 
• Press DEL button on your keyboard

To edit product category

• Go to Inventory tab
• Product Categories
• Select the category you want to delete
• Double click on the name, change the name
• Press Enter to apply changes

To allocate inventory items to a category

• Go to Inventory tab
• My Inventory 
• Double click on the Category cell in the grid to expand the list of categories
• Select the category
  
  OR
• Edit the item from My Inventory screen
• Change the category from the drop down list
  
  OR
• Use data import routine to import Category names for SKUs

Archive Inventory Item

Archiving an Inventory item effectively provides a method to hide stock items from the inventory screen that are no longer available for customers to buy. As an example if you have seasonal stock that you do not wish to view in Linnworks when out of season these can be archived and then reinstated when back in season
Toggle Archive An inventory item has 2 states for Archive (True/False) Go to Inventory Control > My Inventory Enter the search criteria in the search box and click Find Select the required SKU Click the Toggle Archive button to set the inventory item as archived (Fig 2.1) If Archived items are not set to visible the item will be removed from the list	Fig 2.1
Include Archived It is possible to display/hide Archived item from the Inventory screen Go to Inventory Control > My Inventory Tick Include Archived to display Archived items (Fig 2.2) Untick Include Archived to hide Archived items Archived items are displayed with a tick in in the column Archived (Fig 2.3) To add this column Right Click on the column headers and use column chooser to drag the column into the desired position in the grid.  This setting will not be saved The default when My Inventory is loaded is Include Archived ~ unticked Archived column ~ hidden Archived items still retain their stock levels (Fig 2.4)	Fig 2.2  Fig 2.3  Fig 2.4