Inventory management you can audit
Most stock problems start when a number changes and nobody can say why. NextStock records every quantity change as a movement with a reason and a reference, so the balance in each bin always equals its history. It is the foundation the rest of the warehouse management system reads from.
Highlights
Append-only movement ledger
Every receipt, pick, move, adjustment and status change is a movement with a reason and a reference. Balances always equal the sum of the ledger.
Stock with full identity
Each balance is keyed by warehouse, location, SKU, owner, lot, license plate and status, not just SKU and quantity.
Statuses that mean something
Available, quarantine, damaged and hold are separate buckets. Orders draw only on available stock, so held units are never promised.
Floor moves and adjustments
Operators move stock by scanning from a phone browser. Every adjustment carries a reason, so shrinkage shows up as a pattern instead of a mystery.
Why spreadsheet inventory drifts
A spreadsheet stores the current number and overwrites the old one. Say bin A-01-02 shows 40 units of olive oil OIL-008 and a count finds 34. Six units could have been picked without a record, moved to another bin, damaged, or never received. Once the cell has been overwritten, nothing tells you which.
That gap is the real cost. You recount, you guess, and the same error returns next month because its cause was never found. Our comparison of a WMS vs spreadsheets covers the tipping point in more detail.
How the inventory ledger works
NextStock never edits a balance directly. Each change is written as a movement: what moved, how many, from where, to where, why, which document caused it, who did it and when. Movements are append-only. A mistake is corrected with a new movement, not by rewriting the old one.
Because balances are always the fold of the inventory ledger, you can open any SKU or bin and read how it got to its current quantity.
- Receipts, putaways, picks, moves, adjustments and status changes are all movements
- Each movement links back to its source: an ASN, an order, a count or a transfer
- The activity feed on each record shows who did what, and when
What identifies a unit of stock
A quantity on its own is not enough to run a warehouse. In NextStock every balance is identified by warehouse, location, SKU, owner (the client who owns it), lot, license plate and status. Two cases of the same SKU in the same bin from different lots are two separate lines, and that is what makes FEFO allocation and recalls possible.
Quantities are held in base units. Each product can have a pack hierarchy (each, case, pallet) with its own barcode per pack, so scanning a case barcode records the case quantity.
Stock statuses, moves and adjustments
Status is part of the stock record. Units in quarantine, damaged or on hold stay visible in the balance but can't be allocated to orders. Changing status is a movement like any other, so you can see when a pallet went into quarantine and who released it.
Floor moves are scanned on a phone: source bin, item, quantity, destination. Adjustments require a reason, such as damage or a count variance. For wider blocks, holds and recalls can stop picking by lot, SKU, location, license plate, supplier or ASN in one action.
Who inventory management is for
Brands use it as a single client with one or more warehouses. Distributors rely on multiple warehouses, pick faces with min/max levels and walk sequence so counts and picks follow the physical route. For 3PL warehouses, every stock, order and inbound record carries its owner, so one client's units never mix with another's even in a shared bin.
Setting up inventory in NextStock
Guided setup walks you through the warehouse, stock owners, storage locations and opening stock. For larger catalogs, staged bulk import maps your columns, validates every row, shows a preview and commits in resumable chunks. If an opening stock file turns out wrong, a correction import reverses its movements.
A few choices early on save a lot of cleanup later.
- Settle your bin code format before printing labels; see our guide to bin location naming
- Set a walk sequence on locations so pick and count lists follow the aisle
- Load opening stock with lot and expiry where products carry them
- Count a zone before go-live rather than trusting old numbers
Built for
Frequently asked questions
Short, direct answers to the questions warehouse teams ask most.
Can I edit a stock quantity directly?
No. You record an adjustment with a reason, and NextStock posts it as a movement. The balance changes, and the history keeps both the old quantity and the reason for the change. This is deliberate: a number that can be overwritten silently can't be audited, and it hides the causes of shrinkage you most need to find.
Does NextStock support more than one warehouse?
Yes. An organization can have multiple warehouses, each with its own locations, walk sequence and pick faces. Stock moves between warehouses as a transfer through an in-transit location, so units on a truck are never counted in two places, and partial receipts, losses and damage on arrival are resolved explicitly.
How do I load my existing stock?
Use guided setup for a small catalog, or the staged bulk import for opening stock. You upload a file, map columns, fix any rows that fail validation and review a preview before committing. Opening stock can include location, lot, expiry and owner. If an import goes wrong, a correction import reverses its movements, so you don't fix rows by hand.
Can one warehouse hold stock for several owners?
Yes. Owner is part of every stock record, so a 3PL can store several clients' goods in one building, or even one bin, and still report and allocate each client's stock separately. A brand with a single owner never sees client pickers or columns in the interface.
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