Two warehouses:how to show availability.

Once you sell from more than one warehouse, the number on the product page stops being obvious. This text sorts out what to show and what to do when stock runs out anyway.

Three numbers that are easy to confuse

Stock is what physically sits in the warehouse. Availability is stock minus accepted orders and reservations. Sellable quantity is availability from the warehouses that take part in online sales at all. Customers should only see the last one.

Merge warehouses or show them separately

If both warehouses ship at the same time, one total is enough. If the second warehouse means a day of transfer, the customer should see it: part right away, the rest a day later. Hiding the difference ends with an angry phone call.

How much to show

An exact number helps with expensive and rare goods. For bulk goods a range or a plain "in stock" works better, because an exact number shows competitors your inventory and goes stale faster than the page refreshes.

Refresh rhythm matters more than precision

Stock changes more often than descriptions and prices, so it should have its own, more frequent exchange with the warehouse program. A number from yesterday is worse than a range from fifteen minutes ago.

Decisions to make

• Which warehouses take part in online sales.
• What reduces availability: accepted orders, reservations, set-aside batches.
• How to show it: a number, a range or just availability.
• A separate, more frequent refresh for stock.
• What happens when goods run out during fulfilment, tested on a real order.

How it looks in Torveo

In Torveo you assign the warehouses a store sells from, and stock comes from the warehouse program. You can also show stock at an external supplier next to your own, allow orders below stock with planned availability, and collect sign-ups for a back-in-stock notice.

Customers forgive an item being out of stock. They do not forgive seeing it as available.