When you see the term negative inventory in inFlow, that refers to your quantity on hand showing up as a negative number (ex. a Quantity on Hand of -17 at Location A).

We recommend that you avoid negative on hand quantities wherever possible.

How negative inventory can affect performance

Just like how you can’t actually have negative stock on your physical shelves, inFlow’s internal calculations aren’t designed to support negative stock levels. It’s OK if inventory levels temporarily dip into the negative, but if you consistently have products with negative inventory, this can cause performance issues.

That’s because inFlow calculates your product cost continually with every transaction (unless you use manual costing). When a product’s quantity on hand dips into the negative, inFlow will recalculate all of the transactions starting from that point it reached negative inventory. So if you maintain a consistently negative inventory across your products, inFlow has to do lot of extra work to calculate your cost, which can really slow things down.

How to check for negative inventory

The easiest way to check for negative inventory is to run a report in the web app.

You can head to Main Menu > Reports > Stock Levels  and generate the Inventory by Location report (or click here to load it directly).

This report groups all of your products by location, and you can  select the Quantity column to make it easier to find any negative numbers.