Some things you sell are never counted: zip ties, electrical tape, solder, heat shrink, butt connectors, primary wire. You buy them by the box and use them by the handful. Turn on Don't track stock for a product like that and it keeps its price, its vendor and its place on your purchase orders, but no stock count is kept for it and it never shows as low or out of stock.
To turn it on
- Go to Point of Sale > Inventory > Products, open the product and click Edit.
- In the Stock Tracking section, tick Don't track stock.
- If the product already exists, a confirmation opens before anything changes. It shows the product's current count and explains what saving will do. Click Stop tracking stock to go ahead, or Keep tracking to leave the box unticked.
- Click Save Changes.
A new product can be created with the box already ticked; there is nothing to confirm because it has no count yet.
What happens when you save
- Whatever count the product had is set to zero. The change is recorded as a stock adjustment, so its Stock History shows the units that were removed, with the note "Stock tracking turned off: count zeroed" and who did it.
- From then on, nothing changes its stock: not a sale, not receiving a purchase order, not a physical count or a manual adjustment. The Adjust Stock panel no longer appears on its page.
What still works
- It sells on invoices, estimates, repairs and dealer invoices like any product, at its normal price. A sale is never blocked or warned about for stock, whatever your negative-inventory setting.
- It goes on purchase orders, and receiving a PO still updates its cost.
Where it no longer appears
- The In Stock, Low Stock and Out of Stock filters and counts, and the dashboard stock alerts.
- Point of Sale > Inventory > Stock Levels, and the Restock Assistant on purchase orders.
- Physical counts.
- The Low Stock, Current Inventory and Inventory Valuation reports.
On the Products list its stock reads Not tracked, and its product page says Not tracked in place of the stock numbers. To see every product set this way, open the All Types filter on the Products list and choose Stock Not Tracked.
Turning it back off Edit the product and untick Don't track stock. The product counts stock again, starting from zero: nothing was counted while tracking was off, so the count removed earlier is not put back. Count the shelf and use Adjust Stock, or receive a purchase order, to set it.
Serialized and bulk products A serialized product or a bulk (measured) product always tracks stock, so the box cannot be ticked on one. Turn those settings off first if a product really should not be counted.
Setting it from a vendor price sheet On the price sheet review screen, select the rows, then in the Bulk edit box, under Set values, choose Stock tracking, pick Don't track stock and click Set. Products the import creates from those rows start untracked. For products you already have, it changes only if you also tick Stock tracking under "For products you already have, update" when you import. See Reviewing and Correcting a Price Sheet Before You Import It.
If you only want to cover supplies with a charge and never list them, your shop's miscellaneous charge (often called Shop Supplies) in Settings > Invoicing is the other way to do it.