A word that means two things costs more than a word nobody knows.
Every entry below is a choice, and most of the removals are the residue of a real mistake. A glossary tells you what a word means; this page tells you which word to reach for, and which one to stop using.
This page covers:
The words we chose
Where two reasonable words existed, one was picked. These are the winners.
| We say | Not | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Receive | Verify, check in, book in | Recording a delivery is one act with one name, and it happens at the shelf. |
| Cost | Verify, approve, price up | Deciding what a delivery cost is a separate job, done later, by a different person. |
| Allocated | Reserved, committed, on order | It is the word on the screen. "Reserved" is a fine gloss in conversation; the number is labelled Allocated. |
| Assemblable | Virtual, buildable, potential | Units you could build right now from components you hold. "Virtual" sounded like it was not real. |
| Location | Warehouse, site, branch | There are six kinds of location and only one of them is a warehouse. |
| Channel | Store, shop, sales platform | A channel is anywhere you sell. Your storefront is one of them, not the definition. |
| Stock count | Stocktake, audit, cycle count | One name for one activity: recount a location, compare, approve the difference. |
| Write-off | Shrinkage, loss, wastage | A write-off is a decision someone made with a reason attached, not something that happened to you. |
| Reverse | Edit, delete, undo | Ledger entries are never changed. A mistake is corrected by adding the opposite entry. |
| Close a purchase order | Cancel, archive, complete | Closing says "we are not expecting the rest". Nothing is deleted, and it can be reopened. |
| Shadow and live | Test mode, dry run | In shadow, the app records what it would send and sends nothing. Live actually writes to the channel. |
Words we deliberately avoid
Four words are absent from these screens on purpose. Each one caused a real misunderstanding before it was removed.
"Verify"
Receiving used to end in a step called verify, and the word did two jobs badly. Warehouse staff read it as "check the boxes again", and finance read it as "approve the invoice". Meanwhile the stock did not go on the books until the verify step ran, so a delivery could sit on a shelf, physically present and invisible in the app, waiting on paperwork.
The flow was reshaped. Stock now posts the moment a delivery is submitted, and costing is a separate step afterwards. The status a costed delivery reaches is called Costed, not Verified, and the word left the floor's vocabulary entirely. See Cost a receiving.
"Product type", when you mean inventory type
These are two different fields and only one of them affects stock.
- Inventory type is
physical,assembledorservice. It decides whether a product has a recipe and whether it holds stock at all. - Product type is a free-text display label that travels out to your storefront. It is often blank on raw materials and components, and it is meaningless to the inventory rules.
Nothing in stock logic may read the display label. A product called a "Notebook" on a storefront can be physical, assembled or a service, and the storefront label cannot tell you which. See Product types and stock modes.
"Deducted", when you mean allocated
Allocated stock is still on your shelf. Deducted stock has left the building.
An order allocates units the moment it is placed, which lowers what you can sell and changes nothing about what you hold. Deduction happens once, at fulfilment. Saying "the order deducted the stock" when it only allocated it is how a physical count gets reported as a discrepancy that was never real. See When stock actually moves.
"In stock", as a single number
There is no one number. A product has stock on hand, stock allocated to orders, stock it could assemble, and a total that differs at every location.
Say which one you mean. The house phrasing for a built product is the honest one: "we have 25 in stock, and the components to assemble 50 more". See The three numbers of a built product.
One word, three places
Three words legitimately appear in more than one context. They are not ambiguous, but they are worth pinning down.
| Word | On a purchase order | On a receiving | On a transfer |
|---|---|---|---|
| Received | Every ordered line has arrived | This one delivery was recorded | The destination confirmed the units |
| Draft | Not sent to the supplier yet | Not applicable | Planned, nothing has moved |
| Partial | Some lines are still outstanding | Not applicable | Not applicable |
When you write a message about one of them, name the document too: "the purchase order is Received" reads very differently from "the receiving is Received", and only one of them means the supplier is finished with you.
Every status in full is on What each status means.
Explore
Glossary. Every term in one alphabetical list, one or two sentences each. Learn more →
What each status means. The complete status tables for orders, receivings, transfers, stuck orders and ledger movements. Learn more →
When stock actually moves. The allocated-versus-deducted distinction, at length. Learn more →