How orders hold and use stock

Confirming an order holds stock for it. Shipping takes the stock out. Knowing which of the two has happened tells you why a number on the shelf looks different from the number you can sell.

What confirming does

It picks one warehouse for the whole order. The order’s channel names a default warehouse and, optionally, a backup. Keelvy uses the first one that can cover every line. A line is never split across warehouses.
It holds the stock there. Other orders can no longer sell those units. Packing materials the order will need (the box, the leaflet) are held too.
It sends the gap to production. If no warehouse covers every line, Keelvy holds what the default warehouse has and raises production for the rest.

The warehouse is decided once, at confirmation. Shipping later takes stock from the same place, and you cannot change the warehouse after the order leaves draft.

If a channel has no warehouse at all, a confirm is refused with This order has no fulfillment warehouse. Set a default warehouse on the channel in Sales → Channels.

What happens to the shortfall

For each short product, the product’s own setting decides:

Produced automatically: a production order is created, to order or in batches, depending on the product.
Produced by a person: no production order is created. A task is raised instead, and the order page says Some products on this order wait for a person. Open the product to change how it is produced.

If production is switched off in your workspace, the shortfall is not lost. Keelvy puts an item in your actions queue listing every short line, so someone sources the gap by hand.

Confirming never fails because of a shortfall. It only fails for things like a missing warehouse or an order below the channel’s minimum.

See what each order can do before you confirm

The orders list, the board and the order’s own card show an Availability state for each order:

In stock — the shelf covers it.
Can be produced — the shelf does not, but production could make it.
Short of materials — it cannot be made either, and the card says which material runs out first (Then you run out of …) and by how much.

Availability reads the warehouse the order ships from. Stock in another warehouse does not count for it.

What shipping does

Dispatching a shipment takes the units out of stock and writes the movement to the stock journal, with the cost they left at. A shipment can never contain more than the line has left. Packing materials from your packaging rules are drawn in the same step. See Ship an order.

What canceling does

Canceling releases the stock held for the order, and the packing materials too. If the order is already in production, you must choose what happens to the work:

Cancel the production job cancels the linked production and releases its reserved materials.
Finish it to stock leaves production running, and the finished goods go into stock.

A paid order that is canceled is refunded and gets a credit note. See Record a return or cancel an order.