Stock

Can I use it?

Where do the numbers come from?

That depends on how your company is set up, and every Stock page tells you at the top (Stock kept in: ...).

Stock Balances

Stock → Stock Balances. One row per item and warehouse that holds stock or has something planned.

Search by item code or description, narrow to a warehouse or a site, switch on Only items that run out, and click any row to open that item.

One item: the projected balance

Clicking a row opens the item. On the left: where it is, and the projected balance by day - the opening balance, then each day that has a movement, with what came in, what went out and the balance at the end of that day. The bar turns red where the balance is below zero. On the right: every planned receipt and issue behind those figures, with the order it belongs to.

Three rules explain every figure:

1. The projection opens on what can be used - on hand less blocked stock.
2. A movement whose date has passed is counted on today. A purchase order due last Tuesday that has not arrived is still expected, so it is shown as Overdue and lands on today.
3. A movement more than 30 days overdue is treated as abandoned. It is greyed out, marked Long overdue - ignored, and left out of the projection. Closing the order line in the source system removes it for good.

Planned Movements

Stock → Planned Movements. Every planned receipt and issue by date: purchase orders due, production output, production materials, sales deliveries, and transfers between warehouses. Filter by direction, kind of order, item, order number or supplier / customer code. Overdue movements carry an Overdue chip.

When a movement actually happens, the ERP stops reporting it and ThreadWare marks it Done. Switch on Include movements that have happened to see those for the last while.

Stock Ledger (companies that keep stock in ThreadWare)

Stock → Stock Ledger. If your company's stock is kept in an ERP this page says so and offers no form. Otherwise, a Stock Editor records what happened:

• Stock can never go below zero. An issue for more than is on hand is refused, and the message tells you how much there is.
• Entries are never changed or deleted. Correct a mistake with an opposite entry, so the ledger always explains the balance. Each row shows the balance it left behind.
• Type two letters in Item code to search your items, or type a new code.

Material at risk on the production plan

When on-hand figures are loaded, Production → Planning → Recalculate Plan checks each planned order's materials against the projected balance on the day the order is planned to start. An order whose material is not projected to be there shows a red stock icon in the Why column; hover it to see which material, how much is needed, how much is projected, and the first day it is covered by a planned receipt. The same orders appear under Plan risks on the Production Plan board, and planners get one notification per order.

Customer stock: our product in a customer's store

Some of our stock does not sit in our warehouse at all - it sits in a customer's store, and we help him keep it at the right level. Stock → Customer stock is where that is looked after. The pages only appear when an administrator has switched Customer stock on for your company.

The two arrangements

A store is set up as one or the other, and almost everything else follows from it:

A customer with both kinds of stock in one building gets two stores. The arrangement cannot be changed once a store holds stock - close it and open a new one, so the history stays true.

Set-up

Customer stock → Set-up. Stock Admin only.

• Accounts - one per customer. It holds the defaults every store under it falls back to: the days we send on, how long delivery takes, how many weeks of cover to keep, and how far a stock count may differ before somebody has to look at it (the larger of a percentage and a flat number of units - which is what stops a store with two of something needing a decision because one walked).
• Watching only starts switched on. The proposals are worked out and shown but cannot be approved, so you can run alongside what you would have sent anyway and compare the two. Switch it off when you are ready.
• How his item numbers read. If every item number is style, colour and size separated by something - BT100.BLK.9 - say so here (. and style,colour,size), and the item list can be built from item numbers alone.
• Stores - each one is a warehouse of its own in ThreadWare. Its store code is what the customer's own files call it, and has to match them exactly. Where it is - the mine, the site, the town - is optional, and is what the Store Board groups and labels by. A consignment store must also name the warehouse (or location) the ERP holds that stock under: the stock is still ours, so every transfer and write-off has to say where it went.
• Items - shared by every store of the company. Normally imported, not typed.
• Headcount - optional. When a store tells us how many people it serves, the forecast can work in units per person, which survives a change in the size of the workforce that an average cannot.
• Rules - optional. A rule for one item, one style, one store or one account overrides the account's defaults. The most specific rule wins, and anything it leaves blank still comes from the account.

Closing a store or a customer - and, rarely, deleting one

To stop using a store, give it a Closed date; to stop using a customer, switch Active off. Both keep every figure, drop out of the nightly forecast and replenishment runs, and can be undone by clearing the field. That is what you normally want.

Deleting is different: the stores, usage, counts, forecasts, proposals, ERP requests and the stock behind them go, and they do not come back. It is for something set up by mistake, not for something finished with. So it asks for rather more than a yes:

• an administrator must first tick Allow deleting a customer-stock account or store for the company under Companies & Modules, and should untick it afterwards;
• only a Stock Admin sees the buttons;
• the confirmation shows what will go, in figures, and you must type the customer's name or the store's code back before it will do anything.

How many customers, mines and stores?

A customer supplying three mines is one account with the stores of all three mines under it, and each store says in Where it is which mine it stands at. The Store Board sorts by it and prints it in each store's heading, so a store reads "NORTHSHAFT - North shaft store (Example Mine)". Cluster is a second, optional grouping if you need a region above the mines.

If a second customer supplies the same mine, make a second account and put its stores under that, naming the same mine. They appear side by side on the board, and the two arrangements stay separate - as they are in real life.

The four files he sends

Customer stock → Import. Download the template for the kind you are importing; it shows the columns. CSV or Excel, comma or semicolon, any column order, and columns ThreadWare does not need are ignored.

Importing is two steps. The first reads the file and shows you what is in it, and writes nothing; the second writes it. A file that has already been imported is recognised and refused, so nothing lands twice.

The store board

Customer stock → Store Board. One row per style and colour, one column per size - how the customer, the ERP clerk and the factory all already think about the product.

• Each cell: what is on the shelf, what is on its way, how fast it goes, and how many weeks that will last. Hover it for the whole sentence.
• Red means it has run out or gone below zero. A book below zero is not an error - it means more was used than we thought was there, and a stock count will put it right.
• The heading of each store is its code, its name and, in brackets, where it is - the mine or town - and the stores are sorted by that, so every store at one mine is together. Under it: which customer it belongs to, who owns the stock, the ERP warehouse for a consignment store, when it was last counted, and whether any counts are waiting for you.
• For a consignment store the ERP's own balance is shown beside ours as soon as an adapter supplies it. Until then the header says so, once, rather than every cell quietly showing nothing.
• Export (CSV) is what you send the customer - he has no login.

Stock counts

Customer stock → Stock Counts. A count is evidence, not an instruction. ThreadWare never silently overwrites its own book with a number from a spreadsheet:

At a consignment store every accepted difference is also our loss, so it is added to a stock-adjustment request for the ERP. The dialog says so before you accept. At a store whose stock the customer bought, nothing goes to the ERP - we are only correcting our own picture.

The forecast

Customer stock → Forecast. Worked out overnight, or now, per store.

The verdict comes first, above every number, because a forecast without its error is a number somebody will believe more than it deserves:

• "Forecast error 28 % (last week's figure would have been 41 % wrong)" - it is worth something.
• "No better than using last week's figure - treat as a rough guide." - it is still published, as the plain average, and labelled so nobody mistakes it for insight.
• With fewer than six weeks of usage it refuses, and says so in a sentence. It does not guess.

Beside the weeks is the size curve: how much of a style goes in each size, learned from the store's own history and added up over all the colours of that style - a workforce's feet are the same size whatever colour the boot is, and pooling gives the curve several times the data. A size nobody has asked for still keeps a sliver, so a new store is never told "never again". Seasonality is only learned once a store has a full year of history; until then the forecast says so.

Replenishment

Customer stock → Replenishment. On the account's delivery days ThreadWare works out what to send each store and leaves it here for you.

• The matrix is styles against sizes, and every cell is editable. Hover one for the reasoning: "has 6 and 4 on the way; expects to use 9 in the next 14 days and keeps 3 for safety; target 18; proposes 12 (packs of 6)."
• Quantities go out in whole packs. An item being run out is never replenished, whatever the arithmetic says.
• A line the factory may be short of is flagged, not reduced - the decision is yours. When nothing can be checked the run says so in words rather than implying it was.
• In watching only mode you can type what was actually sent, so the proposal can be judged against it.
• The Approve button says what it will create - a sales order request or a stock transfer request - because those are not the same promise.

Approving writes the request and marks the quantities as on their way to the store, so the board and the next proposal already know about them. Mark dispatched when it leaves; Mark received when it arrives, which is the click that raises the store's book.

ERP requests: the hand-over

Customer stock → ERP Requests. ThreadWare never writes into an ERP. Everything that has to happen there becomes a numbered request - a to-do list for the person who works in the ERP:

• Print gives a size grid - one row per style and colour, one column per size, with the flat list of ERP item numbers under it - which is the shape an ERP takes order entry in. CSV gives the flat list for a spreadsheet.
• When it is captured, type the ERP's own document number back. That is what closes the loop, and it is what the list of "still to capture, and how old" is built on.
• Cancelling a replenishment request also cancels what it had on its way to the store, so the next proposal sees the store as it really is.

Invoicing consignment usage

Consignment stock is ours until it is used, so each cycle what was used becomes a usage-invoice request: quantities only, per item, for the period. Issuing it marks that usage as invoiced in the same breath - so a corrected re-send of one of those days afterwards lands on the next request, never on one the clerk has already keyed into the ERP.

Who may do what

What is deliberately not here yet

• No login for the distributor - he gets an exported board.
• No prices or values anywhere. ThreadWare reports quantities; the ERP prices them.
• Nothing is read from or written to the ERP. Every hand-over is a request a person captures.
• This demand does not yet feed the factory's own production plan.

Ask the AI Assistant

With a Stock role (or as a Production Planner) you can ask, in the Stock context:

• "How much of item X do we have?"
• "What is planned to come in this week?" / "Which receipts are overdue?"
• "Will we have enough of item X?" / "When does item X run out?"
• "Which items will run out this month?"

And, for customer stock:

• "What is store ST01 using?" / "How much of that style went out last month?"
• "What is low at the store?" / "How long will it last?"
• "What will it use next month?" - always answered with how good that forecast has been.
• "What are we sending it, and why is that size 12?"
• "What still has to be captured in the ERP?"

The assistant reads the same figures as these pages and never records a stock movement. It can explain a replenishment; approving one, issuing a request and accepting a stock count are yours, on the pages above.

Related guides

• Production - the production plan and Recalculate Plan.
• AI Assistant - asking about stock.
• Administration - giving people roles; where a company's data comes from.
• All guides