Inventory Adjustments
You will occasionally need to update stock quantities manually — after a stock count, when goods arrive from a supplier, or when items are damaged or lost. Medusa makes this straightforward from the Inventory section.
Finding an inventory item
Go to Inventory in the sidebar. Each product variant that has inventory tracking enabled appears as a row. Use the search bar to find items by name, SKU, or barcode.
Only variants with Manage inventory turned on appear in the Inventory list. If a variant is missing, open the product, select the variant, and enable inventory tracking.
Making an adjustment
Open an inventory item and click Edit next to the location you want to adjust.
Enter the new stocked quantity directly — Medusa calculates the change automatically. You don't enter a delta; you enter the correct total.
| Scenario | What to enter |
|---|---|
| You counted 47 units but the system shows 50 | Enter 47 |
| 100 units arrived from your supplier (system shows 23) | Enter 123 |
| 5 units were damaged and discarded (system shows 30) | Enter 25 |
Medusa does not have a built-in audit log for manual adjustments. If you need a record of who changed what and why, note changes externally (a spreadsheet, Slack message, or note in the product record) before and after.
Reserved vs stocked quantities
You can only edit the stocked quantity. The reserved quantity is managed automatically by Medusa:
- +1 reserved when an order is placed
- −1 reserved (and −1 stocked) when the order is fulfilled
- −1 reserved when an order is cancelled (stocked quantity unchanged)
The available quantity = stocked − reserved. This is what determines whether a product can be added to cart.
Bulk inventory updates
For large catalogues, updating items one at a time is impractical. Options:
- Export the inventory list to CSV (Inventory → Export)
- Edit quantities in the spreadsheet
- Import the updated CSV back (Inventory → Import)
The import overwrites the stocked quantity for each matching SKU.
Run a stock take on a slow day and use the CSV import to update everything at once. This takes minutes vs hours of clicking.
Out-of-stock behaviour
When available quantity reaches 0 (or falls below the variant's Allow backorder threshold):
- If Allow backorder is off: the variant shows as out of stock on the storefront and cannot be added to cart
- If Allow backorder is on: customers can still add it to cart and order it; you fulfil when stock arrives