Stock Availability and Need-to-Order

AccuArk's invoice form includes two powerful inventory visibility columns — Available and Need to Order — that give staff real-time insight into whether the items on an invoice can be fulfilled from current stock. This article explains how these columns work, what permissions are required to see them, how availability is calculated, what happens when you sell more than you have, and how the system connects to purchase orders and multi-location fulfillment.

The Available Column

The Available column shows the current sellable quantity of each item at the invoice's selected location. This number represents how many units of that item are physically in stock and available for sale at this specific location right now.

Availability is queried from the inventory_stock_location table, which tracks per-item, per-location stock quantities. The value shown accounts for the gross stock quantity at the location. For standard items, this is the quantity recorded through stock transactions (receiving, adjustments, sales, transfers). For kit and assembly items, AccuArk's StockAvailabilityService calculates availability based on the component items' stock levels.

How Reservations Affect Availability

When other invoices have reserved stock for the same item at the same location, those reservations reduce the effective availability. AccuArk maintains an inventory_reservations table that tracks active reservations by item, location, and invoice. The AccuArk's multi-location inventory system subtracts the total reserved quantity from the gross available quantity to compute the net available stock. This means the Available column reflects what is truly available for new orders, not just what is physically on the shelf.

Real-Time Updates

The Available column updates automatically in several situations:

• When an item is first added to the invoice, AccuArk queries the current availability for that item at the invoice's location and populates the column immediately.
• When the quantity is changed, the Need to Order column recalculates, though the Available value itself does not change (it represents the location's total stock, not a per-invoice allocation).
• When the location is changed on the invoice, AccuArk refreshes availability for every item in the grid by batch-loading stock levels from the new location. This is done efficiently in a single step using AccuArk's availability check.

The Need to Order Column

The Need to Order column shows the shortfall for each item — the difference between the quantity ordered on this invoice and the available stock at the current location. The calculation is straightforward:

Need to Order = max(0, Quantity - Available)

If the ordered quantity is less than or equal to the available stock, the Need to Order column is blank (no shortfall). If the ordered quantity exceeds available stock, the column displays the number of units that cannot be fulfilled from current inventory.

For example, if a customer orders 10 units and the location has 6 in stock, the Need to Order column displays 4. If the customer orders 3 units and the location has 6 in stock, the column is blank because there is no shortfall.

Permission Requirements

Both the Available and Need to Order columns are permission-gated. They are only visible to users who have the INV_VIEW_AVAILABILITY permission assigned to their role. This is controlled by AccuArk's column visibility settings method, which checks the current user's permissions when the invoice form loads.

If a user does not have the INV_VIEW_AVAILABILITY permission, both columns are hidden from the grid entirely. The user can still add items and create invoices normally — they simply cannot see the stock availability information. This is useful for businesses that want to restrict inventory visibility to managers or specific roles while allowing all staff to create invoices.

Selling More Than Available Stock

What happens when a staff member adds more units to an invoice than the location has in stock depends on the item's Allow Orders Exceeding Stock flag:

• Flag enabled (default): The item can be added to the invoice regardless of stock levels. The Need to Order column shows the shortfall, but the system does not block the sale. This is the standard behavior for businesses that accept backorders or plan to fulfill from incoming shipments.
• Flag disabled: The item only appears in search results if it has stock available. Items with zero stock and this flag disabled are filtered out of search results entirely, preventing them from being added to invoices.

Note that the Allow Orders Exceeding Stock flag is set per item in the inventory item record. It controls whether the item appears in search results when out of stock, not whether the invoice can be saved.

Creating Purchase Orders from Shortfalls

When items on an invoice have a Need to Order shortfall, the invoice toolbar's Create PO button becomes relevant. Clicking Create PO triggers the PurchaseOrderFromAccuArk, which performs the following steps:

1. Scans the grid for all rows where the Need to Order value is greater than zero.
2. Groups items by vendor — each item in inventory has a preferred vendor. Items from the same vendor are grouped into a single purchase order.
3. Creates purchase orders — one PO per vendor, with the shortfall quantity for each item as the order quantity.
4. Links the POs to the invoice so they can be tracked together.

This workflow lets staff identify exactly what needs to be ordered, group those items efficiently by supplier, and generate purchase orders directly from the invoice without switching to a separate purchasing module.

Multi-Location Availability

For businesses with multiple locations, AccuArk's AccuArk's multi-location inventory system provides cross-location inventory visibility. This service can:

• Show availability across all locations — For any item, the service queries stock levels at every active location, including reserved quantities. This gives a complete picture of where stock exists across the business.
• Suggest transfers from other locations — When an item has a shortfall at the current location but is available at another location, the service identifies the best source location (the one with the highest net available stock) and suggests a transfer. The suggested transfer quantity is the lesser of the shortfall and the source location's net available stock.
• Create transfer requests — Staff can initiate an inventory transfer request to move stock from the suggested source location to the current invoice's location. Transfer requests are tracked in the inventory_transfer_requests table and managed through the transfer workflow.

Multi-location fulfillment gives businesses the ability to fulfill customer orders from their entire inventory network rather than being limited to what is physically at the current location.

Related Articles

• Adding and Managing Line Items (Article 135) — How to add items to invoices and work with the item grid
• Using Line Item Notes (Article 137) — Adding per-item notes to invoice line items
• Purchase Orders from Invoice — How the Create PO button generates vendor orders from shortfalls
• Multi-Location Fulfillment — Detailed guide to cross-location stock visibility and transfer requests