From In-Portal User Manual

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Inventory

This tab is facilitates the inventory management for tangible products. The following fields display the inventory status of the product you are editing (they all contain zeros for a new product):

• Qty In Stock – this is the available quantity of the product. You may actually have more products at the warehouse, depending on the quantity reserved.
• Qty Reserved – this quantity is reserved in all pending orders. Physically, the products are still at your warehouse; however, they are already committed to your customers in their pending orders. Once an order is shipped, or denied, the quantity reserved is released.
• Qty Backordered – this is the amount of product on backorder (a sum of all quantities from the back orders for this product). Depending on your inventory control settings, as soon as you add products to your inventory, they may be allocated towards the backorders.
• Qty On Order – this is the amount of product you have ordered from the manufacturer or the distributor. It is the quantity that you are expecting to receive in order to replenish your supplies.

You cannot modify these numbers directly, because In-commerce enforces inventory control based on your order processing and inventory management. To modify these numbers, you need to enter the desired quantity in the “Qty” field, and use one of the inventory action commands, below:

• Add – this replenishes your inventory. Note, that the amount may not be immediately added to the quantity in stock, depending on your backorder quantity and settings. Usually the backorders have priority and will be fulfilled before the product goes to stock.
• Remove – this removes products from your inventory. Usually this action is used to adjust for missing (broken) product. Remember, that all properly processed orders are accounted for automatically, so you do not need to adjust the inventory yourself for all your sales.
• Order – this action notifies the inventory that there is an order placed with the manufacturer or the distributor of the product. It increased the quantity on order field.
• Receive Order – this action signifies that you have received the product from the manufacturer or the distributor. It is similar to the “Add” action, but it also decreases the quantity on order field.
• Cancel Order – this action cancels the manufacturer’s order and decrements the quantity on order field.

Note, that the system will prevent you from performing illegal actions with your inventory. It will try to fulfill the action up to the possible limit, and disregard the rest. For example, if you have 10 items in stock, and you are trying to remove 15, it will remove the 10 items, and disregard the order to remove the other 5.
During a normal operation of the store, the administrator would use the “Order” and “Receive Order” actions most frequently. All other operations occur automatically as the orders are processed. (The other actions become necessary when something goes wrong, and manual adjustment is required).