Inventory management is one of the most important parts of retail sales. Keeping your inventory up to date and as accurate as possible helps ensure that your team is keeping important items in stock, allowing you to continue selling your favourite items! In this guide we will take a look at how to manage and adjust the inventory for the products you have created on your BusyPaws account.

You will need at least one product on your account to be able to use this functionality. If you have not yet added products to your account, first take a look at our help guides on Managing Your Product List and Importing Your Product List before returning here.

Your account's inventory can be easily accessed from anywhere on your BusyPaws account by selecting the Retail Sales/Inventory icon in the left-hand menu bar.

That opens your main Product Inventory page. This page has two tabs: "Inventory" and "Retail Sales", but defaults to Inventory.

Products are listed with their name, variant attributes (if any), category, SKU, and current stock. If you have more than one facility on your account each facility's inventory will be listed in a separate column.

By default, the product list is sorted alphabetically by name. Click any of the blue column headers to adjust the sorting criteria. When default sorting is in place all headers will display normally. If a specific header has been selected to sort the list, the chosen header will have a small arrow icon next to it. Select the same header again to change the order from descending to ascending (or vice versa).

Use the filters at the top of the page to display only products assigned to a specific category and/or brand, or use the search bar to find a specific product by name.

Selecting the name of any product takes you to its Edit Product page. For more information on the process of editing your products, check out our guide on Managing Your Product List.

Select "Manage Products" in the "Actions" button menu at the top of the page to navigate to your main product management page.

Manual inventory adjustments can be required for many reasons. Perhaps you've just received a delivery of stock, you're looking to add a returned item back into your inventory, an item has been damaged, or your team is making corrections following a stock count. Whatever the reason, inventory adjustments can be done manually from your main Product Inventory page.

There are a couple of ways to adjust inventory, depending on your needs. To start, either highlight the existing inventory and type in a new value directly into the field or use the up/down arrows to adjust the value in increments of 1.

Alternatively, click the adjustment icon next to the inventory field to open a menu with adjustment options.

Type a value directly into the "Increase by" field or use the up/down arrows to adjust it in increments of 1. Note that this field may be set to a negative value if you wish to decrease the total stock.

Use the "Change Reason" field to assign a purpose to the adjustment. This reason will appear in the adjustment history. Options include "Correction" (default), "Count", "Received", "Return restock", "Damaged", "Theft or loss", and "Promotion or donation".

Any product with unsaved changes to its inventory count will display in blue. Additionally, any time there are unsaved changes, and pop-up will appear at the bottom of the screen indicating the number of impacted products.

After you've made the desired changes, click the "Save Changes" button to confirm the new values for any updated products. Note that if you navigate to a different page prior to saving your changes the inventory counts will revert back to their original value.

The "Actions" button drop-down at the top of the Product Inventory page includes both "Import" and "Export" options.

Click "Export" to generate a CSV file with your current inventory.

Selecting "Import" from the "Actions" button drop-down allows you to initiate the product import process. If inventory values for existing products (identified using their unique handle) are included in the CSV file selected for import, the the count for those products will be updated to match the values in the CSV file.

For more information on importing product data, check out our guide on Importing Your Product List.

All adjustments made to a products inventory, whether done manually or as a result of a product purchase or data import, are saved in the product's adjustment history. To see a product's history, first locate it on your Product Inventory page then select its adjustment icon.

Then, in the resulting pop-up, click "History".

The history lists all adjustments including those made manually and those made automatically due to a client purchase. Each adjustment is listed with the associated quantity change, the name of the user that made the adjustment, the reason, and information on when the adjustment occurred.

Hover your mouse over the timeframe for any listed adjustment to get the exact date and time.

Any adjustments made due to client purchases will include a reference to the invoice. Click on the invoice number to open its information page.

For more information on the various aspects of product and inventory management, check out the following help guides: