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Stock management is essential from the moment you start selling products whose quantity is depleting at each sale.
In order to assert if you need PrestaShop's advanced stock management feature, read this chapter's "General concepts": http://doc.prestashop.com/display/PS16/General+Concepts.
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If you wish to use the advanced stock management, you must:
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Stock management within PrestaShop runs through several screens, and can use one of two levels.
These levels are:
- No stock management: there is no product quantity, PrestaShop assumes that a product's stock is infinite. Use this if you only sell virtual products (files, services, etc.).
- Simple stock management: for every product you sell, you can indicate the currently available quantity (including product combinations). Use this if you have few products or a simple storing location.
- Advanced stock management: for every product you sell (and its combinations), you can indicate where the available quantity is located in an unlimited number of warehouses (with varying carriers and valuation methods). You can also see your stock movements, the current status of your stock, you stock coverage, and you can place an order to your product suppliers.
These screens are:
- Preferences > Products > "
- Catalog > Products > product's page: one to two tabs are added to the creation/edition page of a product :
- Quantities:
- In Simple mode: you can manually indicate the quantity of each product.
- In Advanced mode: quantities are handled from PrestaShop's "Stock" menu.
- Warehouses: in Advanced mode, you can indicate the location of a product or is combinations within a warehouse.
- Quantities:
- Stock: in Advanced mode, you can make use of all the stock management pages (warehouse creation, stock movement, stock status, stock coverage, supplier order).
The following section describe these pages one by one.
Stock management from the product sheet
Quantities management
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You can now set more than one supplier for a given product. For each supplier associated to a product, you can set the supplier's reference number and a default purchase price for that product as well as its combination. This information is used when making an order to the supplier.
Warehouses management
If advanced stock management is enabled, a "Warehouses" tab appears in the product sheet, where you can indicate which warehouse(s) the product and each of its combinations can be stored in. You can even indicate the location for the product and its combinations.
You must first create at least one warehouse (see below) before associating a product to it and setting the product location in it. This step is essential: it is important to at least set one warehouse in which a product can be stored. This will have considerable impact on the order preparation in the multi-shipping context.
Warehouses management
In version 1.4.x, stock management was strictly tied to the quantity of product available for sale, which was set once then varied according to stock movement without taking any warehouse issue into account.
The advanced stock management feature makes it possible to create one or more warehouses. In order to create one, go to the "Warehouse" page under the "Stock" menu.
Once you start creating a new warehouse, you must fill in the following fields:
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Be careful of the carriers you choose to authorize, as this will a huge impact on the order preparation in the multishipping scenario.
In the situation where you manage more than one shop, you will also have to associate each shop to one or more warehouses. This enables you to set from which warehouse the client orders for a given shop can be sent.
Once the warehouse has been created, you are taken back to the list of warehouses. Click the "View" icon on the right of its row to access a bird's eye view of its information, including the references of all the products stored in it, the sum of all the available quantities, a global accounting valuation, details of the stored products, and the history of the stock movements for that warehouse.
Each warehouse page also contains two links at the bottom:
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Now that you have created one or more warehouses, you have to set stock for each of them. To that end, go to the "Stock Management" page under the "Stock" menu.
All available products from your catalog are listed in this interface. If you have any combination of product, you can manage them from the "Details" action.
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- Add stock. This button adds stock for a specific product in a given warehouse.
- Remove stock. This button removes stock for a specific product in a given warehouse.
- Transfer stock. This button transfers stock from one warehouse to another.
The last two actions only appear if there already is some stock of the chosen product in any warehouse.
The "Transfer stock" only appears if you have at least two registered warehouses.
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To add more stock to a product, use the "Add stock" action (up arrow) for said product or product combination. A new page opens, containing a form where the most important information is displayed in order to help you identify a product with certainty (reference, EAN13 and UPC code, and name). This information cannot be changed from this form, therefore it is grayed out.
You must then set:
- Quantity to add. This must be a positive number. You cannot remove stock by using a negative number.
- Usable for sale?. Whether that quantity of stock is usable for sale, or simply stored until you make a decision about it. In the second case, it is considered "reserved".
- Warehouse. The warehouse where the stock is to be added. The form lets you add product stock to only one warehouse at a time. If you need to add stock for this product in more than one warehouse, you must make the entire adding process again for each warehouse.
- Unit price (tax excl.). The unit price for the product at the time of the addition. This is for valuation purpose.
- Currency. The currency of the unit price. If the currency is not available, you can create one from the "Currencies" page, under the "Localization" menu, or import from the "Localization" page under the "Localization" menu, by importing the localization pack of the country whose currency you want to use.
- Label. A label for the stock movement that you are generating, for future reference. This is purely informational.
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This interface enables you to view the stock movement history. You can display all of the stock movements, or only those tied to one warehouse. Filters can be applied to refine your search.
When the "Filter movements by warehouse" drop-down list is set to a warehouse, you can make a CSV export of the obtained list.
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This interface enables you to have an instant overview of your stock, either globally or per warehouse. The numbers are current.
For each product or product combination in stock, the following indicators are available:
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This interface enables you to overview the coverage of your stock. The coverage indicates how many days your current stock can last. This information is very useful, as it helps you predict the necessary restocking. Coverage is calculated according to previously registered stock movements.
You can get the stock coverage for all the warehouses, or for a single warehouse.
You can also set the time period (one week, two weeks, three weeks, one month, six months, a year) of registered stock movement which is to be taken into account when calculating the coverage.
Finally, you can highlight the stock coverage which is below a given number of days. This will highlight the relevant products, helping you identify them quicker.
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One of the major features of the stock manager is the ability to place orders to suppliers so as to better manage your restocking.
This interface enables you to manage all your supplier orders, as well as reusable order templates.
The order template creation process is the same as the order creation process (except for the "Expected delivery date" field). We will therefore only explain the order creation process.
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The creation of an order for a supplier can be broken down in two steps: creating the order, then adding products to it.
So, the first step is to define the order's headers:
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The interface of the order creation form has been updated with a second form below the previously-filled fields. You must use that second form to add products to your order, using the integrated search engine. The products that you add appear in a new list.
For each product, you must set or update the unit purchase price (tax excluded), the quantity to order, any applicable tax rate, and any product-specific discount.
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The whole point of creating a template is to serve as a basis for new orders.
The supply order template creation process is the same as the one for a real order, except that:
- You do not have to set a planned delivery date.
- The "Automatically load products" value will be the quantity to order for the loaded products, not the stock/typed value difference.
Moreover, contrary to an ordinary supply order:
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Each order has many available actions (in the "Actions" column of the order list). One of them enables you to edit the status: the "Change state" one. There are six possible default statuses, but you can add your own (see the "Configuration" section of this chapter).
An order's status helps you understand your stock movements at a glance thanks to their color code. Here is the significance of the six default statuses:
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Click the "Add new" button to reach the creation form.
A status has a label, a color, and enables you to define whether:
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It is possible to add more labels to stock movements. Click the "Add new" button from the "Stock movement labels" section to access the creation form.
You simply have to set a name for the label, and indicate whether it pertains to stock increase or decrease. Those labels can be used when adding/removing/transferring stock manually (as explained earlier).
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It is possible to choose the default stock movement labels in the following standard cases:
- Increasing stock (manually).
- Decreasing stock (manually).
- Decreasing stock following the shipment of a client order.
- Increasing stock following the delivery of products from a supplier's order.