Inventory & Warehouses
Inventory & Warehouses
ZingaShop tracks stock per variant, per warehouse. This lets you hold inventory in more than one location, decide which storefronts each location serves, and let the storefront show accurate in-stock and out-of-stock states based on live counts.
Warehouses
A warehouse is a stock location. Each has a code, a name, an address, a country and timezone, and an active flag. You can create as many as you need (a main warehouse, regional hubs, a returns location).
Warehouses are mapped to storefronts: a storefront draws stock from the warehouses assigned to it, in a priority order you set. This is what lets a .com and a .in storefront fulfill from different locations while sharing one catalog.
Stock levels
For each variant in each warehouse, ZingaShop keeps these counts:
| Count | Meaning |
|---|---|
| On hand | Physical units currently in the location |
| Reserved | Units held for open carts and unfulfilled orders |
| Incoming | Units expected from a purchase order or transfer |
| Available | What a shopper can actually buy right now |
| Safety stock | A buffer you keep back from the available count |
Available is calculated as on hand minus reserved, plus incoming when the variant is backorderable. Reservations are placed during checkout and released automatically if the order is cancelled or the cart expires, so two shoppers cannot buy the last unit twice.
Every change to stock is recorded as a movement (receive, ship, return, adjust, transfer, cycle count), giving you an audit trail of how a count reached its current value.
Editing inventory
You can edit stock in several ways:
- Inline — change on-hand counts directly in the stock levels list.
- Bulk — select multiple variants and set or adjust their counts at once.
- CSV — export your current levels, edit in a spreadsheet, and import to update in bulk. Useful for stock takes and supplier updates.
- From the product — edit a product's stock on its Stock tab while you work on the product.
You can also set a bin location per variant/warehouse for pick accuracy, and a per-line safety stock buffer.
How the storefront shows availability
The storefront's in-stock / out-of-stock state for a product is computed from live stock across the warehouses mapped to that storefront. If any serving warehouse has availability, the product is buyable; if none do, it shows as out of stock.
You can override this automatic behavior with a manual availability setting on the product, which always wins:
| Availability | Effect |
|---|---|
| In stock | Buyable |
| Out of stock | Not buyable |
| Pre-order | Buyable ahead of release, with an expected date |
| Backorder | Buyable beyond current stock, with an expected date |
| Discontinued | Shown as no longer available |
For pre-order and backorder you can add an expected-availability date and a note, and control whether the item is buyable, so shoppers know what to expect. You can also show a lead time ("ships in 2–3 weeks") on the product.
Backorder, pre-order and discontinued
- Backorderable stock lets orders exceed on-hand counts; incoming units count toward availability so you can keep selling while restocking.
- Pre-order is for items not yet released; set the manual availability to pre-order with an expected date.
- Discontinued marks an item as gone for good while keeping its page and history intact.
Managing inventory
Warehouses and stock are managed in the Zingasuite portal at https://console.zingasuite.com, under Inventory. Inventory can also be read and updated through the public API, which is the recommended path for connecting a warehouse-management or ERP system, or for syncing counts on a schedule. See the Developer API Reference chapter.