Magento 2 Stock / Inventory Management

Efficient stock management is crucial in eCommerce, and this statement is also true for Magento 2 sites. You should take the inventory of your store under control and always be aware of the number of goods in your store.

There are two general approaches to stock management in Magento 2. You can control all products’ general inventory settings or deal with each product individually. However, both approaches are required to achieve the ultimate efficiency.

First, let’s configure the inventory of your Magento 2 store. Open the admin panel and go to the ‘Stores’ menu. Select the ‘Configuration’ option, expand the ‘Catalog’ tab and click the ‘Inventory’ section.

From here, you can manage the Stock Options and Product Stock Options settings.

Let’s begin with Stock Options.

Decrease Stock When Order is Placed – enable to decrease a stock quantity of the product when an order is placed.
Set Items’ Status to be in Stock When Order is Cancelled – enable to place items from cancelled orders back in stock.
Display Out of Stock Products – hide to display products that are out of stock.
Only X left Threshold – adds a phrase ‘Only X products left’ to all your products, where X is the entered number. Also, you can configure this for each individual product. Hence, it may be better to leave this option equal to 0.
Display products availability in Stock on Storefront – enable to display a stock availability on product pages.

Now, let’s switch to Product Stock Options.

Manage Stock – this option is enabled by default and used to count products in stock. It can be disabled if you sell products that can’t run out of stock.
Backorders – enable this option to allow customers place orders of out-of-stock products.
Maximum Qty Allowed in Shopping Cart – sets the maximum number of products that can be placed in the shopping cart.
Out-of-Stock Threshold – you can set the minimum number of products to reach before the Out-of-Stock message should be displayed.
Minimum Qty Allowed in Shopping Cart – defines the minimum number of products required to place an order. You can set various limits for different groups of customers.
Notify for Qty Below – this option notifies you when the number of products in stock drops below the defined quantity.
Enable Qty Increments – allows you to set the quantity of a product in a single lot that you add to your stock.
Automatically Return Credit Memo Item to Stock – with this option enabled, products added to a cart automatically get an out-of-stock status and if they return back when an order is canceled.

We can move further. Go to the Products menu and select the Catalog option. Next, you need to select a product to manage its stock quantity. Then, select the ‘Advanced Inventory’ option from the ‘Advanced Settings’ tab.

From here, you can modify the following options:

Manage Stock – disable this option if this product can’t be out of stock.
Qty – sets the stock quantity of a product.
Out-of-Stock Threshold – sets the number of products when the Out-of-Stock message should be displayed.
Minimum Qty Allowed in Shopping Cart – defines the minimum number of a product that is required to place an order.
Maximum Qty Allowed in Shopping Cart – sets the maximum number of a product that can be placed in a single shopping cart at a time.
Qty Uses Decimals – allows to use decimals if a product can be ordered partially.
Backorders – enables backorders for a product.
Notify for Qty Below – notifies you when the number of products in stock drops below the defined level.
Enable Qty Increments – allows you to set the quantity of a product in a single lot that you add to your stock.
Stock Availability – enables you to manually mark a product as out of stock.

Also, you can always quickly modify the quantity and availability for a certain product in the ‘Product Details’ section.

However, inventory management in Magento 2 still deserves a better management toolkit. You can try 3rd party extensions to add some useful features to your store.