A stock transfer moves a specific stock lot of a boutique item from one center to another and tracks it from shipment through receiving. It lives in Points & Inventory (formerly Material Support) alongside Inventory Items, Stock, and Checkouts.
Use a transfer whenever one center ships boutique inventory to another: restocking a satellite location from a main warehouse, rebalancing stock after a donation drive, or moving a lot before it expires at a center with slow turnover.
A transfer always names one specific source lot, not just a quantity of an item. That lot's expiration date, donation or purchase source, unit cost, and condition all travel with the shipment, so none of that history is lost when the goods land in a lot at the other end.
Quantity that has shipped but not yet been received shows as in transit and cannot be claimed at either center. The source center's on-hand quantity drops the moment the transfer ships. The destination center gains nothing until someone there physically receives the shipment. A box on a van is not stock anyone can promise yet.
In-transit quantity belongs only to the transfer itself, so it is never double-counted at the source and never shows up as available stock at the destination.
A transfer moves through up to four statuses:
• Draft: created but not shipped. Nothing has left the source center yet, so a draft can be cancelled freely.
• In transit: shipped. The source lot has been decremented by the shipped quantity, and the destination has nothing to claim yet.
• Received: fully accounted for. Every unit shipped has either been accepted into destination stock or logged as an exception.
• Cancelled: abandoned while still a draft. Since nothing left the source shelf, cancelling is a clean no-op.
A transfer that has already shipped cannot be cancelled. Once stock is in transit, it has physically left the source shelf, so the only way to close it out is receiving, including receiving a shortfall as an exception if some or all of it never arrives.
1. Start a transfer and choose the source center, destination center, the specific stock lot, and the quantity to send. Add notes if useful.
2. The transfer is created in draft. Source stock is untouched at this point.
3. Ship the transfer when the goods actually leave. Shipping decrements the source lot and moves the transfer to in transit.
If the source lot no longer has enough quantity when you ship, for example because a checkout or another transfer claimed it first, shipping is rejected with a conflict rather than allowed to overdraw the shelf.
Receiving happens at the destination center once the goods arrive:
• Enter the quantity accepted. Accepted quantity creates or tops up a destination stock lot carrying the same item, expiration date, donation source, unit cost, and condition as the source lot, so the goods become claimable there.
• Enter a quantity exception for anything that did not arrive in good condition, was lost, or is otherwise being written off, along with a reason. Exception quantity leaves the in-transit total but never becomes destination stock.
• A receipt must account for at least one of the two, and can do both at once for a shipment that arrived partly damaged. Receiving nothing is not a valid receipt.
Receiving can happen in more than one pass. If only part of a shipment arrives today, receive that part now and receive the rest, or write it off, later. Every partial receipt on the same transfer tops up the same destination lot, so one shipment never gets scattered across several destination lots. A partial receipt can never exceed the quantity still outstanding on the transfer.
There is no separate way to cancel a transfer once it is in transit. An in-transit transfer that will never fully arrive is closed by receiving the shortfall as an exception with a reason, since the goods already left the source shelf and there is nothing left to reverse.
• The transfer list can be filtered to a center's inbound transfers (what it is receiving) or outbound transfers (what it has sent), and can hide already-settled transfers with an open-only filter.
• Each transfer has an audit history: the shipment event and every receiving event, each with its quantity, reason (for exceptions), and who acted, staff user or boutique operator.
• Each transfer also has a reconciliation view checking four numbers against each other: quantity shipped out of the source, quantity received at the destination, quantity recorded as an exception, and quantity still outstanding. These always balance, since every unit that leaves a source lot is either received, written off as an exception, or still in transit.
• A transfer between a foreign tenant's center, or between the same center twice, is rejected.
• Destination checkout cannot consume stock that is still in transit. It is not part of any center's on-hand lot until it is received.
• A partial receipt cannot exceed the quantity still outstanding on the transfer.
• Concurrent transfers and checkouts against the same source lot cannot overdraw it.
Stock transfers reuse the same Stock permissions as the rest of Points & Inventory:
• Stock - View: see the transfer list, a transfer's detail, its audit history, and its reconciliation.
• Stock - Create: create a new transfer.
• Stock - Update: ship a transfer and receive against it.
Gating shipping and receiving on Update rather than Create lets an organization allow a destination center to receive transfers without also letting it raise outbound shipments from another center's shelves. Set these on Settings → Security → User Groups.
• Inventory Tracking
• Cycle Counts: Reconciling Physical Stock
• Boutique Operators: PINs and Supervisor Approval
