Glossary
On hand vs available
On hand is what is physically in the building. Available is what you can still promise. The gap between them is everything already spoken for, damaged, held or not yet put away.
What it is
On hand is the physical count: every unit of a product inside the four walls, in whatever condition and wherever it sits. Available is the sellable count: the units a new order could be promised right now.
They are different numbers because a unit can be present and still not yours to sell. It may already belong to an order that has not shipped. It may be damaged, or held for inspection. It may be sitting on the receiving dock, counted but not yet placed where a picker can reach it.
Why it matters
Most overselling is a system that knows one number and uses it for both questions. The dashboard says 120, the channel is told 120, and the floor discovers there were 80 to pick. Keeping the two numbers separate, and publishing only the second, is the whole difference.
A worked example
A serum has 120 units on hand. Two open orders reserved 30. Six units came back damaged from a return. Ten were received this morning and still sit on the dock. Available is 120 minus 30 minus 6 minus 10: 74. The channel sees 74. When the ten are put away, available becomes 84 without anyone editing anything.
How DockingWare does it
DockingWare keeps stock in named buckets: pick face, bulk, allocated, damaged, quarantine, received on dock, and pipeline for goods still inbound. Available is computed on the server from those buckets, once, and that is the number published to every connected channel after each movement that changes it.
Questions
- Why does my system show 120 on hand but only 80 available?
- Forty are already allocated to open orders, damaged, in quarantine, or still on the dock waiting for putaway. On hand counts the building; available counts what a new order can take.
- Which number should I publish to a marketplace?
- Available, never on hand. Publishing on hand is how a channel sells a unit that another order already owns.
- Is available the same as ATP?
- In practice yes. ATP, available to promise, is the precise name: pick face plus bulk, minus what earlier orders already reserved, with damaged and quarantine never included.