Stock control methods

Overview

Stock control methods determines how Cin7 Omni manages your products (for example, which stock is sold).

There are four types of Stock Control Methods:

FIFO (first in first out)
Batch
Serial
Non Stock

FIFO (first in, first out)

FIFO is the default method of stock control in the system. It means that those items that are received -- receipted -- first are sold first.
Why does this make a difference? The order in which you account for the cost of your goods makes a significant difference in the way your gross profit is calculated which has inevitable tax implications. For this reason, FIFO is the preferred accounting method for International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS).

Cin7 Omni does not support Last in First Out (LIFO) as it is banned under IFRS.

Batch

When stock has the Batch stock control method assigned to it, when you receive in products, you must assign a batch number at the time of receipt. Similarly, when dispatching batch products, you must pick from a list the batches you'd like to dispatch.

This is particularly useful when you want to track batch numbers in the system, for instance with dye lots for tiles or expiry dates for food.

Fashion products are stored as the batch stock control method, as technically the sizes are stored as batch numbers. However, the goods are still accounted for using the FIFO method and operate much like FIFO products.

Expiry dates

Although Cin7 Omni does not have any specific expiry date functionality, batch numbers are frequently used to store expiry dates for food products. When producing or receiving in food products, expiry dates are added to the batch number field for those products.

Batch numbers are stored as text, so Cin7 Omni can't filter by expiry date.

Serial

Tracking stock using the Serial stock control method requires every inventory item to have a serial number.

When you receive in serial products, you must assign a serial number to each product at the time of receipt. If you are receiving more than 10 items, you can paste the serial numbers from a spreadsheet.
Similarly, when dispatching serial products, you must select the exact serial number you'd like to dispatch from a list. This is particularly useful for electronics goods and components that require each serial number to be recorded.

You can add up to 128 characters for your serial number.

Non stock

When the stock control method is set to "Non Stock", no stock is recorded for a product. This is the equivalent of what may be called a "non-diminishing product" in other systems. This is particularly useful for storing services as products, such as "Delivery Fee" or "Labor", so they can be quickly added to an order.

While the cost of non-stock products may be added to Sales Orders and Production jobs (which makes Gross Profit more accurate), this cost will not be included in the COGS sent to your accounting software. In other words, the cost of non-stock products is retained in Cin7 Omni for reporting purposes only.

Create a Non stock product

Select Products from the left side panel.
Select Create New Product
Change the Stock Control drop-down to Non Stock.

FAQs

Can I change my products from FIFO to Batch or from Batch to FIFO?

No, any existing stock must be adjusted out before changing the stock control method.