Stock That Never Moved (Stock Exceptions)
Sometimes a sale goes through, a return is accepted, or a driver closes their day — and the stock behind it does not move. The paperwork is right and the shelf count is wrong.
Stock Exceptions is the list of every one of those. It exists so that "stock on hand" is either correct, or wrong by an amount you can see and act on. An empty list means your stock figures can be trusted.
Why a sale is never blocked
The system deliberately lets the sale, the return and the day close finish, and puts the missing stock movement on this list instead.
Two reasons, both practical:
- A cashier with a customer in front of them must not be stopped because a stockroom count is wrong somewhere in the back office.
- A van sale reaches the system hours later, when the tablet syncs. By then the customer has taken the goods and paid. Refusing it at that point would not prevent anything — it would just lose the record of a sale that really happened.
Opening the list
- Open Stock Exceptions from the sidebar, under the Items group.
- On your first visit a short Show me how tour starts automatically. You can replay it any time with the Show me how link at the top right.
Three cards sit above the list:
| Card | What it means |
|---|---|
| Open Exceptions | How many problems are still outstanding. Your stock on hand is off by these. |
| Ready To Post | Ones where the item, quantity and stockroom are all known, so you can put the movement through from this screen. |
| Needs A Setting Changed | Ones you fix somewhere else — nearly always a register with no stockroom set. |
Reading a row
| Column | What it tells you |
|---|---|
| Problem | What went wrong. Red is a real hole in your stock; amber is a setup gap where the stock did move, just from the wrong place. |
| Item | The item that did not move. Blank for a setup problem, which affects everything sold on that register. |
| Quantity | How much did not move, in the item's stocking unit. A minus sign means it should have come out of stock. |
| Stockroom | Where the movement was meant to happen. |
| Document | The sale, return or day cycle behind it. |
| Times seen | How often the same problem happened again while this row stayed open. A register with no stockroom set counts every sale of that day here, on one row. |
| Last seen | When it last happened. |
| Status | Open, Resolved, or Dismissed. |
The problems you will actually see
- Register has no stockroom (amber) — the most common one. The register was never told which stockroom it sells from, so its sales came out of the default warehouse. If you have more than one store, they are all draining the same warehouse; if it is a van, the van's own stock never goes down. Fix it in Registers, then mark these rows as handled.
- Stock not deducted for a sale (red) — the sale went through but the stockroom had nothing left to take. The quantity is known, so you can post it from here once the stock is really there.
- Returned stock not put back (red) — a customer return was accepted and credited, but the goods never re-entered stock.
- Van stock not returned on day close (amber) — the driver closed their day but the van's leftover stock was not moved back to the warehouse. Count the van and move it with a transfer.
- Sale has no register / Sale register not found (red) — a sale arrived without a valid register, so no stockroom could be worked out at all. Usually a device that was set up wrongly.
- No stockroom could be resolved (red) — the register has no stockroom AND there is no default warehouse. Nothing is deducting stock at all on that register. Create a warehouse under Locations, or set the register's stockroom.
Filtering
Click Filter.
- Status — defaults to Open. Switch to Resolved or Dismissed to review what was closed and by whom.
- Problem — only lists problems you actually have, with a count each. Deal with one kind at a time.
- Only ones I can post from here — hides the setup problems and leaves the movements you can put through immediately.
Good to know
- Nothing on this list is ever deleted. Resolved and dismissed rows stay, with who closed them and when.
- Rows collapse. One register with no stockroom is one row per day, not one row per sale — the Times seen column carries the count.
- The list does not fix your stock by itself. Clearing a row is a decision somebody makes; see Clearing a Stock Exception.
- The ⋯ actions menu on each row only appears if you have permission to resolve exceptions. With view-only access you see the list and the counts, which is deliberate — an auditor should be able to read the break without being able to post into it.
Where to go next
- Clearing a Stock Exception
- Finding, Filtering, Editing, or Deleting a Register — where the most common cause is fixed
- Checking Quantity on Hand