Why Negative Quantity Happens

Listing Mirror keeps track of your inventory based on what you enter as your quantity and orders that come through and are filled through your various inventory sources. If you have 1 item, and sell it on a marketplace, then Listing Mirror shows that you have 0 items! Seems pretty simple.

However, on occasion you may see that you've managed to get a Negative quantity. (Seeing -1) That can be alarming. This article is here to explain the most common situations that may result in negative quantity. 

1. An order hasn't been pushed to fulfillment center. If you have MCF enabled, but do not have autofulfillment turned on you may experience negative quantity. The reason this happens is Listing Mirror sees that you have QTY in the fulfillment warehouse (FBA or Deliverr) so we are giving that QTY to the marketplace. When the order comes in, normally we would route it to the FBA or Deliverr warehouse and remove QTY there. However, if autofulfill isn't enabled, we will default to taking the QTY out of your MF inventory source. If that MF inventory source is at 0 when the order comes through, then you will see a negative. Once you send the order to the fulfillment center, we will take the QTY from that inventory source and your MF QTY will return to 0. 

2. An order cannot be filled by the expected inventory source. If the case is that there is an issue with getting the order to the fulfillment center (the order came from out of country so Amazon cannot fulfill it) then we will default to taking the item out of your MF inventory source, which can also result in negative quantity. You can fill the order yourself if you have stock, or cancel the order. If the order is cancelled on Listing Mirror,  you will need to adjust the inventory manually back to 0. 

3. You aren't managing your inventory in Listing Mirror. If you have another software that is not integrated with Listing Mirror that is managing your inventory, that usually means you aren't updating your inventory in Listing Mirror. When orders come in, we will still "pull" the item from your MF inventory source, which may result in negative QTY. You can adjust this as needed, or not, if your inventory is being updated by another software. 

4. You have untracked listings. An untracked listing is a listing that exists on the marketplace, but wasn't created in or imported to Listing Mirror. If the SKU exists in Listing Mirror, but not for the channel, that means the item that is "untracked" is not getting inventory updates. So, if you QTY goes to 0 from being sold on other marketplaces, we cannot tell the "untracked" listing that it's at 0. You may sell an item on that marketplace that is "untracked" which could then cause the QTY in Listing Mirror to be negative. All listings should be in Listing Mirror to avoid "untracked" listings and negative quantity.

If you have any questions about negative quantity, please reach out to our support team!