← All articles ·eCommerce ·02/05/2025

Behind the feature: How stock management works in ReadyCMS

After the big update to stock management in ReadyCMS, many clients asked us, "Okay, but how exactly does it work?"

This blog answers that. We'll go through the key components of our inventory system and show you how it all connects, from setup to daily use.

The core structure

At the heart of ReadyCMS stock management is a transaction-based system. Instead of simply storing a number for each product, we record every stock movement. Every sale, return, adjustment, or manual update is tracked and timestamped, creating a clear, auditable history of stock changes.

It is designed to provide flexibility, real-time updates, and support for multiple locations.

It's the quiet hero that ensures every order is fulfilled, every location is in sync, and every product has just the right amount of visibility.

Here's how we structured it:

1. Inventory dashboard

This is your main control center. It's where you can monitor and adjust stock across your business.

The interface is simple yet powerful. Designed to feel natural when you manage your stock.

ReadyCMS Stock Dashboard displaying total stock value, out-of-stock metrics, low stock alerts, stock levels, and product aging report. Includes a line and bar chart of stock changes over time.

Dashboard tabs

'History' tab: Keeps a complete log of stock changes—what was added, removed, or adjusted, and when
'All' tab: Shows combined inventory across all store locations
(Optional) Location-specific tabs: Each store has its own tab so that you can manage stock individually

Dashboard metrics

Stock trends over time:
A visual graph displays recent inventory changes, including additions and reductions, helping you track stock movement and detect unusual fluctuations.
Inventory overview:
Summarized metrics like total inventory value, number of out-of-stock products, and out-of-stock variants give you a quick health check of your inventory.
Stock levels:
This section highlights your current total stock, breaking it down into stocked products and stocked variants. It provides insights into how much of your catalog has active inventory.
Stock health indicators:
Here, you can see how many products and variants are approaching low stock status based on a configured threshold. This helps you take proactive measures before stockouts occur.
Aging report:
Displays how long products and variants have been in stock on average. This helps identify slow-moving inventory and improve turnover strategies.

This setup helps you instantly see the big picture or zoom into the details of a single location.

2. Product stock pages

Products show their current stock, broken down by location if applicable. Admins can make manual adjustments (like for damaged items or corrections), and each change is logged.

Each product has its own inventory section, where you can:

check the current stock per location
manually adjust stock levels
set low-stock alerts
monitor how stock behaves across multiple sales points

This means you can control inventory at a very granular level, not just store-wide.

If the product has variants, each variant has its stock management section:

Editing a product variant in ReadyCMS, displaying fields for SKU, price, sale price, wholesale price, and barcode, followed by a stock management section with a chart showing inventory levels across multiple storage locations.

3. Store location integration

Whether you're managing stock in one location or ten, ReadyCMS ensures that inventory is updated in real time. Stock is instantly adjusted across the system when a product is sold online or through an integrated POS.

If multi-location stock is enabled, each location can have its own stock level, and transfers between locations are handled as movements, too, with full tracking.

Under shop settings, you can define your store locations. Each location gets:

a dedicated tab in the dashboard
a button to quickly access and manage that location's stock
these buttons will lead you to a stock history tab of our inventory dashboard, filtered for that specific location
every location has individual settings, in case you want different rules for each one
We'll dive deeper into multi-location inventory and how you can manage it all from one dashboard—no spreadsheets needed. We'll also explore why tracking stock history is essential for smooth daily operations and smarter inventory decisions.