In Lightspeed Retail, you can cause items to have negative inventory by:

• Selling items with insufficient stock in store
• Selling items with insufficient stock online
• Sending items with insufficient stock on transfers
• Sending items with insufficient stock on vendor returns

If you've integrated your Retail account with one of our partners through the API, you can also cause items to have negative inventory if the integration sells items or transfers items.

Should the stock of any of your items go negative, you can easily identify and correct their quantity on hand with the Negative inventory report.

Selling items with insufficient stock in store

If you add more quantity of an item to a sale than you currently have in stock, the following alert displays:

If you then sell more quantity than you currently have in stock to a customer, the item will have a negative quantity on hand (QOH) and appear in the Negative inventory report. From there, you can identify the reason for the discrepancy and correct the item's negative quantity on hand.

Selling items with insufficient stock online

If you're an Omnichannel merchant and have the Allow backorders setting enabled or the Track the inventory setting disabled for a product or variant in your eCom back office, the following stock availability and delivery time display on your online store:

If a customer then purchases more quantity of the product or variant on your online store than you currently have in stock, the item will have a negative QOH in your Retail account and appear in the Items with negative stock report. The product or variant in your eCom back office will also have a negative QOH. From the Negative inventory report, you can identify that the sale was from an online backorder as the ECOM ORDER column will show as Yes. You can then order more of the item to fulfill the backorder.

Sending items with insufficient stock on transfers

If an item on a transfer doesn't have any stock available, its current quantity on hand of zero or below is highlighted in red under the AVAILABLE column.

If you then send more quantity of an item on a transfer than you currently have in stock, the item will have a negative QOH and appear in the Negative inventory report. From there, you can identify the reason for the discrepancy and correct the item's negative QOH.

Sending items with insufficient stock on vendor returns

If an item on a vendor return has more quantity in its Return qty. field than its Stock field, the following Over return alert displays:

If you then send more quantity of an item to a vendor than you currently have in stock, the item will have a negative QOH and appear in the Negative inventory report. From there, you can identify the reason for the discrepancy and correct the item's negative QOH.