Core Concepts

Items and Inventory

An Item defines what something is. Inventory represents what you physically have. An Item holds its code, name, UOM, accounting category, tracking, status, and cost references. Inventory adds the current quantity, Lot and Container where applicable, Location, status, cost, source, and history.

RM-ALMOND-RU / Roasted Almonds, No Salt can be one Item definition while several receipts create separate physical inventory records over time.

That distinction lets the definition remain stable while physical inventory changes every day. It also prevents a receipt, movement, production run, or sale from being reduced to an unexplained replacement of a single number.

Units of Measure

A Unit of Measure (UOM) expresses quantity, such as kg, lb, g, or ea. Choose the unit that matches how you actually control the Item. It follows the Item through inventory, purchasing, and production, so Indietory can restrict changes after downstream records exist.

Tracking Types

• By Item: one current quantity is enough.
• By Lot: inventory remains separated by Lot.
• By Lot + Container: individual physical Containers under a Lot have their own quantity, label, and Location.

Tracking controls receiving fields, the records displayed in View Inventory, scanning, movement, production, and sales selection. Choose the least granular type that gives your operation the control it needs; it becomes restricted after history develops.

By Item is useful when only the total quantity matters. By Lot is appropriate when batch, supplier, date, cost, or status needs to remain separate. By Lot + Container is useful when packages such as pails, drums, boxes, totes, rolls, or bins need their own quantity, label, Location, or movement history.

Lots

A Lot groups inventory with a common receiving or production identity. Indietory generates a stable internal Lot Code. Manufacturer Lot Code is a separate external reference.

Lots can record manufacturer, supplier, dates, and a status: Available, Quarantined, Pending Retest, Hold, Rejected, or Expired. Status is separate from physical quantity: stock can exist while not being available for normal use.

Retest, Expiry, and Final Use By are business-calendar date controls. When reached, they can automatically quarantine an Available Lot, expire a Lot, or reject a Lot respectively; due Lot inventory is also kept out of operational use even before persisted status is reconciled. See Automatic Lot Status Updates for the exact rules and precedence.

Indietory Lot Code is the stable code generated by Indietory. Manufacturer Lot Code is a separate reference supplied by a manufacturer or outside source. Keeping both gives you a consistent internal identity without losing the outside batch reference.

Containers

A Container is an individually tracked physical portion of a Lot. It has its own current quantity, Location, label, and history while remaining tied to its Item and Lot. Use Adjust Inventory → Split Container when one physical Container becomes two separately controlled Containers. Use Split Lot when part of a Lot needs to become a separately managed Lot.

For example, a 1.5 kg receipt of RM-ALMOND-RU may create one Lot with individual Containers. All Containers share the Lot identity, but one can move from RECV to ST-A01 while another remains in Receiving.

Locations

A Location describes where current inventory is stored: a room, rack, shelf, cabinet, bin, staging area, or another real storage point. Moving inventory changes Location and records a movement; it does not change quantity. Location labels can be scanned in supported workflows.

Oak Creek Goods uses physical, neutral Location names such as RECV, QC-HOLD, ST-A01, PROD-01, and ST-B01. They describe where inventory is, not whether it is raw material or finished goods.

Sources, quantities, and costs

Inventory enters through a Manual Receipt, Purchase Receipt, or production output. Keeping the source attached connects current stock back to the event that created it.

Quantity is the amount at the Item, Lot, or Container level required by tracking. Unit Cost is the cost for one unit of that inventory’s UOM. Standard Cost is a manual Item reference; Average Cost is maintained from inventory activity. Historical inventory cost is not rewritten by changing Standard Cost.

Quick Sales preserve the historical cost of stock that leaves inventory. After a sale is saved, its detail can show COGS, Gross Profit, and Gross Margin from that recorded cost and the actual sale revenue. Item Detail can also summarize realized historical sales performance separately from an Item’s Average Cost. These are operational calculations, not replacement accounting, tax, or net-profit records; they exclude labor, overhead, fees, taxes, and other business expenses.

Manual and Purchase Receipts can carry receipt cost. Production output carries cost forward from actual material use and applicable additional production cost. Different receipts or Lots of the same Item can therefore have different historical Unit Costs.

Reservations and actual use

A Reservation sets inventory aside for a Production Order; it does not consume it. A requirement can show Still Needed to Reserve before production, Remaining to Add during execution, and Variance after completion. Those labels distinguish planned quantity, reserved quantity, and actual use.

Reservations allow the plan to be connected to actual stock before production begins. Actual use is recorded only when Produce Inventory records an Add Material action, preserving the difference between what was expected, what was set aside, and what was physically used.

Instructions, orders, and execution

Production Instructions answer how an Item should be made. Draft revisions can be edited; released revisions are protected and retain their release-time material cost estimates as historical snapshots.

Production Orders answer what you plan to make in one run and scale the released requirements. New and Planned orders use current Item planning costs; release freezes the order’s planning estimate.

Produce Inventory records what happened: actual material consumption, instruction-step completion, and finished output. Its execution cost is separate from the Production Order planning estimate. Instructions may be Batch for bulk/process work or Assembly for discrete units.

This separation of template, plan, and execution lets Indietory preserve both what was supposed to happen and what actually happened. Released Instruction revisions are not silently rewritten after an order is based on them.

Records, history, and traceability

View Inventory answers what you have now. Inventory History answers what happened to stock. Audit Log answers who did what, when, and to which application record. They can overlap, but they answer different questions.

Use View Inventory for current quantity, Location, status, and source. Use Inventory History for receipt, movement, adjustment, production, sale, and reversal events. Use Audit Log when the user/application action around the operational record is the question.

Roles and access

Every active User has a Role. Module permissions are None, Read Only, Write, or Admin. Read Only permits viewing; Write permits normal supported actions. Admin is a higher level, but currently does not generally provide behavior beyond Write, so Write is appropriate for ordinary working access.

QR labels and scanning

QR labels tie physical inventory and Locations to records. On supported mobile devices, the scan control can use the camera. Compatible desktop scanners enter values into focused scan inputs. Search and manual selection remain available when scanning is unavailable. See Inventory and Location Labels for label sizes and QR-only use.