Serial tracking is for goods where the individual unit matters and has to be identifiable after it leaves the store. Instead of a single number on the shelf, the system holds a row per physical unit, and the cashier picks the exact unit being sold.
Once a product is serialized, its on-hand count is the number of units marked in stock. You no longer set its quantity by hand.
Turn it on
- Open Products and click the product.
- Go to the Inventory tab.
- Under Serial tracking, press Enable serial tracking.
- Confirm. The dialog says what you are agreeing to: this product switches to per-unit tracking and its on-hand quantity will derive from the count of in-stock serial units. This can't be undone from the product screen.
That last sentence is accurate — there is no button to switch it back off.
You do not have to press this first. Adding serials to a product that is not yet serialized turns tracking on automatically.
Add units
The Add units (scan or paste, one per line) box takes serials one per line, or separated by commas. It is built for a scanner: put the cursor in the box and scan each unit; each scan lands on its own line. A counter under the box shows how many it has read, and the button reads Add N units.
A serial already on that product is skipped rather than added twice. If every serial you pasted was already there, the panel shows Action failed — try again in red. That message means nothing was added because they were all duplicates, not that something went wrong — check the In stock count and carry on rather than scanning the box again.
Blank lines are ignored, and a serial longer than 100 characters is dropped. The panel never lists which serials it skipped — check the unit count before and after if you need to be sure.
Units are added at the location you are currently working in, and the product's on-hand count is brought in line with the new unit count straight away.
Read the unit list
Below the box is one row per unit, with a filter strip across the top: All, In stock, Sold, Returned, Removed, each with a count.
| Status | Means |
|---|---|
| In stock | On the shelf and sellable. |
| Sold | Went out on a sale. The row links to that sale. |
| Returned | Came back on a refund and is not yet back on the shelf. |
| Transferred | Dispatched to another location. |
| Removed | Written off — damaged, lost, or otherwise gone. |
Two actions sit on the rows:
- The trash icon on an in-stock unit marks it Removed. Use it for a unit that is damaged, lost or stolen. It comes straight off your on-hand count.
- The circular arrow on a Returned or Removed unit puts it back to In stock.
Reconcile, top right, re-reads the units and sets the product's on-hand count to the number that are in stock. Use it if the number on the Inventory page and the number of in-stock units have drifted apart; it records a count movement in the stock audit log when it changes anything.
At the register
Tapping a serialized product's tile opens Select a unit, listing the units in stock at that location with a scan box at the top. Scanning or tapping a unit puts that unit in the cart, and the cart line shows the serial underneath the product name. The serial travels with the sale.
Refunding that sale flips its units to Returned, which takes them out of your sellable count but does not put them back on the shelf. Inspect the unit, then use the circular arrow to re-shelve it, or the trash icon to write it off.
Tapping the tile and scanning a matching product barcode both open the unit picker. Select the physical unit and check its serial on the cart line before taking payment. A product barcode identifies the model, so it does not replace unit selection.