Stock does not leave your inventory the moment you write an invoice. It leaves when the invoice is posted. In between, those units are committed: still physically on your shelf, but already promised to a customer.

Manifold shows this in three places, and all three count the same way.

Go to Inventory, Products. Each row shows Stock (what is physically on the shelf), On Order (units on submitted purchase orders that have not arrived yet), Committed (units promised on open invoices), and Available (what is genuinely left to sell). Click any column heading to sort by it, so sorting by Committed brings everything that is spoken for to the top.

Inventory, Stock Levels shows the same Committed and Available columns alongside Stock and Threshold.

Opening a single product shows the full picture in the Inventory Levels box: Total Stock, On Order, Committed, Defective, and Available. When anything is committed, a Committed to Open Documents section appears below it listing every document those units are promised to: the invoice number, its date, the customer, the work order and where it stands, and how many units. Click the invoice or the work order to open it. The rows always add up to the Committed figure above them, so if a product reads Committed 4 you can see exactly which four.

Available is Stock minus Committed minus anything marked Defective. If you have four of an item, one is on an open invoice, and none are defective, Available reads three. Available can go below zero: if you have one on the shelf and three on open invoices, it reads -2, which means you have promised two more than you own. Manifold shows the negative rather than hiding it at zero, because that is the number that most needs to reach you. Whether a sale is allowed to take you there is your Allow negative inventory setting under Settings, Inventory.

**What counts as committed**

A unit is committed when it sits on an invoice, repair ticket, warranty ticket, or dealer invoice that has not been posted yet. That includes an invoice waiting to be posted at pickup, a serialized item invoiced before its serial number was assigned, and every deposit job: an invoice you have written and taken money against while the vehicle is still to come in. Nothing about a deposit, a payment, or a work order moves the stock. Posting does. So a job that closes with a balance still owed keeps its units committed, and still counted in Stock, until the invoice is paid off and posts, even though the parts are already in the customer's car. Post the invoice and the numbers settle.

Three things deliberately do not count

  • Product on an estimate. An estimate is not a commitment, and nothing is reserved until it becomes an invoice.
  • A purchase order still in Draft does not count toward On Order. It starts counting the moment you submit it.
  • A voided or refunded invoice releases its units straight back.

**Low Stock and Out of Stock go by Available**

The Low Stock and Out of Stock labels, the summary cards on the Stock Levels page, the stock alerts on your dashboard, the Low Stock report, and the Restock Assistant on a purchase order all classify on Available, not on the shelf count. Ten on the shelf with all ten promised to open jobs cannot be sold to the next customer, so for a restocking decision that product is out, not in. Out of Stock means Available is zero or below; Low Stock means Available is above zero but at or below the product's threshold. The Restock Assistant sizes its suggestion from Available too, so it orders enough to cover what you have already promised. The number inside the Stock badge on the Products list is still the shelf count, because that is what that column means; its colour is the sellable verdict.