Overview
Stock is two numbers that must agree: how much you have, and what it is worth. Most systems get the first roughly right and the second badly wrong, because the second only becomes true after the freight invoice, the customs bill and the clearance agent’s commission have all arrived — usually weeks after the goods.
Nama tracks both continuously, on movements rather than on month-end adjustments.
A warehouse is anywhere you want a separate balance
Not necessarily a building. A shelf in a showroom, a distribution truck, a quarantine area for goods under inspection, a goods-in-transit space between two branches — if you want to answer “how much is here” independently, it is a warehouse. Inside it, locators are the aisles, racks and bins.
Some warehouse types behave differently on purpose:
- Transit holds goods while they move between locations, so they are available at neither end until the transfer completes — which is how a transfer stops being a window where stock exists twice or not at all.
- Inspection receives goods before approval, so nothing enters available stock until quality clears it.
- Reservation holds what is already promised to a customer.
Items, and how much detail each one deserves
An item is anything you track: a product, a raw material, a spare part, a service, a consumable. What makes the item master usable at scale is that the detail is optional per item — units with a default for sales and a different one for purchases, customer and vendor codes so a document can be printed with the code the other party uses, sizes and colours and versions, minimum and maximum stock levels, and a commercial policy that says whether this thing may be sold, purchased, returned or manufactured at all.
Where traceability matters, it can be enforced by rule rather than by discipline: batch and expiry tracking for anything with a shelf life, serial numbers for units that must be individually traceable — including items that carry two serials, like an air conditioner with separate indoor and outdoor units.
Cost that keeps up
Cost is updated on every movement under the method you adopt — FIFO, moving average, or last purchase price — so cost of goods sold and inventory value stay consistent without anyone reconciling them.
Then reality intervenes, and this is where the page most systems skip begins. An additional cost document distributes freight, insurance, customs, clearance and commission across a receipt’s items to arrive at true landed cost. Revaluation handles a market value that has fallen. And cost can be frozen at a period close so a closed month stays closed.
Promised, picked, loaded, delivered
Reservation allocates stock to a customer or an order, so what is on hand and what is actually available stop being the same number — the single most common cause of a sale that cannot be shipped.
When the goods move, pick rules decide what is taken and from where: oldest first, nearest expiry first, nearest location, or a specific batch. The pick list walks the warehouse worker through the aisles in an efficient order rather than sending them back and forth. Loading and delivery documents carry it to the customer’s door with proof of receipt.
For bulk materials — grain, aggregate, concrete, metals — electronic weight scales are read directly at receiving and loading stations, with the scale’s own barcode label parsed into item, package and weight, so a weighbridge ticket becomes a stock movement without being typed.
Counting without closing
A count runs between two documents. Start stock taking snapshots the expected balance for the scope being counted — a warehouse, a locator, an item group, a branch — and freezes it as the reference. End stock taking compares what was physically counted against it and generates the adjustment documents itself: receipts for surplus, issues for shortage.
Because the scope is yours to choose, a large operation runs frequent cycle counts on small scopes instead of one annual shutdown, and the shorter counting window is also the more accurate one.
Whether stock may go negative at all is a policy rather than an accident: an immediate balance check, a by-date check that replays movements in order to be sure the balance never went negative at any point, and an overdraft policy resolved per line, per item, per section or globally.
Warehouses and locators, item setup, costing and landed cost, reservation, picking and delivery, the weight scale and stock taking are documented in the supply chain section.
