Inventory in CRM.COM refers to the type and quantity of stockable physical goods held in your business’s warehouse, intended for sale or rental to contacts or other organisations. It allows your business to track, manage, and allocate stock efficiently, ensuring products are available for orders, rentals, or other business operations.

THE ESSENTIALS

Before explaining the Inventory features, let's familiarise ourselves with some standard terms related to Inventory used throughout the software.

Warehouse

The warehouse is a storage location where a business stores its stockable (traceable and non-traceable) physical goods until they are distributed to contacts or merchants/service providers who have ordered them.

Each business has a single warehouse which is automatically created when it signs up to CRM.COM.
Items from the warehouse can be sold or rented to contacts or merchants/service providers in the business's network.
Rental items returned to the business are also stored in the warehouse.
The stock balance is adjusted accordingly whenever a stock item changes ownership.

Stockable Products

Stockable products are the physical goods stocked in a business's warehouse and whose stock levels are tracked. Stockable products can be Sold or Rented to contacts or other organisations.

Traceable & Non-traceable Products

A stockable product can be one of two types:

Traceable - The product can be tracked throughout the platform using a unique identifier, typically the product’s serial number. Traceable stockable products can be used to create Devices. The platform maintains the full history of each device, including when it was stocked into the warehouse, when it was sold or rented, who owns it, and the invoice associated with the sale.
Non-traceable - These products do not have a unique identifier (e.g., cables) and therefore cannot be tracked as individual items. Instead, they are managed as quantities within the warehouse. The platform records how many units of a particular product type are available, but not which specific unit was sold to a contact.

Refer to the Product Catalogue manual for further details on traceable, non-traceable and other product types.

Devices

A Device is an addressable unique piece of equipment that is either a traceable physical good with a serial number or created on the fly for communication purposes as part of the customer registration process in order for the business to send in-app notifications.

There are two core uses around Devices for businesses when offering devices to its contacts:

Purchase Models and ownership: Offer devices to your contacts flexibly: they can rent, purchase outright, or acquire them through device plans.
Provisioning Model: When offering digital services (e.g., content, internet, mobile data) that require a specific device for access, devices can be either purchased by contacts (giving them full ownership) or rented where your business retains ownership.

Devices can be added to your warehouse in bulk using the Import Data utility, through Stock-in-Warehouse transactions, or via back-office Web APIs, which is especially useful if your business does not maintain physical stock on-site.

State & Status

Each device in the warehouse has a state which reflects its condition at any point in time.

New - The new, unused device is owned by the business and located in the warehouse; it can be sold or rented to a contact or merchant/service provider.
Used - The device was previously rented to a contact or merchant/service provider who has returned it back to the business (who now owns it) and is located in the warehouse. Such devices can be sold or rented again.
Sold - The device has been sold to a contact or merchant/service provider, i.e. the owner is no longer the business.
Rented - The device is owned by the business but is located at a contact's (subscriber's) address or a merchant/service provider location. Such devices are rented through subscription services.
Dispatched - This is a temporary state indicating that the device has been dispatched to the contact's address or merchant/service provider's location but has not yet been invoiced. While the item remains un-invoiced, it is still considered owned by the business. Once the invoice has been issued, ownership of the item will be transferred from the business to the contact or merchant/service provider, and the device's state will be set to Sold.
Blocked - The New or Used device is located in the warehouse but cannot be sold/rented. Unblocking the device will return it to the state it was in prior to being Blocked, which could be found in the device's history.
Own device - A contact's own device which has been registered in CRM.COM (e.g. a mobile phone used by a contact to register via an app). The business has never owned such devices and, therefore, cannot be returned to the warehouse. If the same device has been registered multiple times, then only the last contact who registered the device is recorded.

For each state, additional statuses can be configured by the business, thus extending the operational flows of device management.

Rentals

Devices owned by the business and located in the warehouse can be rented to contacts. Renting a device goes hand-in-hand with a subscription, so contacts may be charged a recurring rental fee along with their recurring subscription fees.

Rented devices are still in the ownership of the business but located at the contact’s address. Rented devices must be returned to the business once the contact terminates their subscription and will therefore assume a state of Used.

Devices available for rental will have up to two prices defined in the product catalogue; the selling price and the rental price. Rentals can only be provided to contacts through Orders, never through an Invoice alone. Devices can also be rented to other organisations in your Business Network.

Ownership

Device ownership refers to who owns the device - your business or a contact or an organisation within your Business Network. customer. There are two main use cases:

Rentals – Your business retains ownership of the device while the contact uses it. When the contact is no longer a paying one, the device must be returned. Device ownership is set to “Owned by the Business“.
Purchase Model – Ownership is transferred to the contact, either immediately with an outright purchase or once all installments of a device plan are invoiced and paid. Device ownership is set to either “Owned by a contact” or “Owned by a merchant” accordingly.

Device ownership is transferred to a contact only when the device is invoiced and also delivered after a stock out warehouse transaction. The device’s ownership is

Deferred Pick

A deferred pick is a fulfilment process in which a contact’s order is placed and invoiced upfront, while the physical picking of goods from the warehouse is postponed until a later stage. This approach is often used to allow for activities such as serial number assignment, packaging, assembly, or coordinated delivery. In such cases, the ordered items are reserved in the warehouse for fulfilling the order. Deferred picking can apply to both traceable and non-traceable goods.

Device Plans

A Device Plan defines how a device is offered when not purchased outright, specifying payment schedules, invoicing, and ownership transfer. It consists of milestones, each generating an invoice, and automatically progresses until the full amount is paid and ownership transfers to the contact. Device Plans use Order Queues, allowing contacts to choose full payment or a plan during ordering, with invoices issued automatically until the device is fully paid and contact is granted ownership of the device.

Stock Balance

Calculating the warehouse stock balance is a dynamic process based on the transactions submitted against the warehouse. The stock balance is calculated per stockable product based on the following formula:

Stock Balance = all increased stock transactions (stock-in, add adjustments) - all decreased stock transactions (stock-out, minus adjustments).

Warehouse Transactions

Warehouse transactions involve the movement of stock into or out of the warehouse, impacting the stock balance. These transactions can either be performed manually by a user or automatically generated in response to user or contact actions. There are four types of warehouse transactions:

Stock In - Adds stock to the warehouse
Stock-Out - Removes stock from a warehouse (can only performed by other processes, cannot be done manually)
Stock Adjustment - Used to adjust the stock balance of a stockable product in the warehouse. In the case of traceable products, then devices can also be created/deleted through this process.
Stock Reservation - Reserves specific devices stocked in a warehouse for contact’s orders. When an order is placed, the stock is not immediately deducted from inventory but is reserved to ensure that pending orders can be fulfilled.

Once a stock warehouse transaction has been posted, then the stock balance of the warehouse is immediately adjusted. See how Inventory actions are performed below.

Returns Through a Credit Note

The credit note financial transaction directly returns stockable products (traceable and non-traceable) back to the business from which the goods were sold, causing a stock-in warehouse transaction at the same time (if applicable).

Managing Inventory

To see the business's warehouse contents navigate to Commerce > Inventory. There are two views on this page, Stock Balance and Devices. Switch between the views using the buttons in the top right-hand corner of the page.

Stock Balance

This is the stock balance summary page of all traceable and non-traceable products in the warehouse, with their respective stock balances. Use the filter option to narrow down your search if required.

Stock Balance view

Below is a brief description of each column, along with the formula used to calculate the total amount for each one.

Product: product name and SKU

Is Traceable? : if the product is classified as traceable (uniquely identifiable) or not

Ownership: All items which the business owns. This includes all of the items located in the warehouse and all items dispatched to contacts (through orders) but not invoiced yet.

Stock in hand: number of items currently in the warehouse

Reserved: number of items reserved, i.e. included in Orders, which are not completed yet. Therefore, those items are not invoiced yet.

Available for sale/rent: stock in hand, which is available to be sold or rented. Reserved items are excluded.

Dispatched: number of items dispatched to contacts via Orders but not yet invoiced, so the business still has ownership.

Rented: number of items rented, i.e. items (traceable only) given out to contacts as a rental so the business still has ownership.

Average cost per unit: unit cost/quantity

A stockable product’s Stock Balance information is available in the following areas:

Product details page - Users can view the product’s current stock levels, including which Orders or Service Requests the item is reserved for.
Ordering flow - Stock availability is displayed so users can easily identify whether a product is in or out of stock.

View Devices

In the case of traceable products, this link (View Devices) is also the access point to view the actual list of devices in the warehouse for a specific product.

Select the View Devices option of a traceable product

View the devices for the selected product

The Device Actions available from the Devices page are explained below.

Devices

Select the Devices button to see all devices, whether owned by the business, a contact or a merchant/service provider. Use the filter options to narrow down your search if required.

Devices view

The Reserved badge states the initial entity for which the device is reserved (applicable only for reserved stockable items).

Bulk Update

In the Devices view, users can select multiple devices and apply updates in bulk. This includes setting the same Spatial Location, assigning a Location, updating Custom Fields, or Blocking the devices.

Bulk update devices

Device actions

There's a list of available actions which can be performed for each device, the actions, however, vary depending on the state of the device.

Change Spatial Location

A device can have a spatial location within the warehouse, use this action to identify the exact location of the device (e.g. geospatial coordinates, aisles, shelf numbers etc.)

Change spatial device location

Change Location

Select one of the defined Device Locations to specify where the device is physically stored.

Change Custom Fields

Update inventory-related custom fields for the selected device.

View Additional Information

View additional details about the device, including its spatial location, reservation status, rental status, and whether it has been enabled for a service.

History

Please look at how a selected device's history has evolved, from the moment it was stocked into the warehouse when it was sold or rented, when it was returned, and so on.

Device history

Edit Characteristics

If the traceable product definition includes characteristics, they can be set here. For traceable physical goods, the characteristics are also carried over to the related devices, so each device will store the actual characteristic value.

Refer to the Product Catalogue manual for further information on how to set up product characteristics.

Block Device

Block the device from being sold or rented. This option is only available for devices with a State of New. The device can be Unblocked at any point in time.

Inventory Actions

From both the Stock Balance and Devices pages, additional options allow dedicated stock actions to be performed against the warehouse. Select the more options (…) icon in the top right-hand corner of the page.

Stock In

This action is used to add new items to the warehouse, you can stock-in multiple products with a single transaction.

Supplier - State the supplier from where the products were purchased, this is a free-form text field.

Product - Select the product to be stocked in, only stockable products can be selected for the stock-in action

Serial Number/Electronic ID- In the case of traceable products, you must specify the serial numbers of the devices that are being added to the warehouse; this is not applicable for non-traceable goods

Quantity - The number of items to be stocked must be manually specified only for non-traceable products. For traceable products, the serial numbers provided will be used to determine the quantity.

Unit Cost - Enter the product's unit cost from the supplier; note that this cost is irrelevant to the product's selling/rental price

Stock-in action

Select Save to complete the stock-in transaction. The respective items will be created in the warehouse, which can then be sold or rented.

Manual Stock-in transactions must only be created to add new stock items to a warehouse.
Stock-in transactions are also performed when contacts and merchant/service providers return physical goods previously rented by them back to the business. However, in such cases, a stock-in transaction is automatically created and managed by CRM.COM processes, such as when issuing a Credit Note.
It’s possible to set up a Stock-in Automation that overrides the default device state from a Credit Note ('Used') to ‘Blocked’, with an optional status of possibly ‘Inspect Condition’ or similar.
The Import Data utility can also be used to import devices using a file with a predefined format.

Stock Adjustment

Create a Stock Adjustment transaction to correct any stock balance errors for traceable or non-traceable products.

Stock adjustment

Description - provide a brief description explaining why the stock adjustment is being made.

Product - select the product whose Balance will be adjusted; multiple products can be added

Available Balance - once the product has been selected, the available stock balance is displayed

Adjusted quantity - for non-traceable devices, set the quantity to be adjusted (to increase the quantity enter the number to be increased by, to reduce the quantity, enter a negative number). In the case of traceable physical goods, specify which of the existing devices must be removed and/or which ones should be added.

Stock-out warehouse transaction can only be performed CRM.COM automatically when an item is Sold or Rented, indicating that it no longer exists in your warehouse and that it's now in the possession of a contact or merchant/service provider.

Similarly, Stock Reservations can only be performed by CRM.COM for any stockable items included in an invoiced-upfront Order. Reservations are released once the item is picked and delivered to the contact, i.e. the reserved item is stocked-out.

View Transactions

This is a history log of all transactions performed against all warehouse items; click on the view (eye) icon of a specific transaction to see further details. The list includes all three types of warehouse transactions; stock-in, stock-out and stock adjustments. Use the filter options to narrow down your search.

Warehouse transactions

Contact Devices

On the contact page (Contacts > My Contacts), one is able to see the devices owned or rented by the contact, these devices may or may not be associated with a contact's subscriptions. Select the View Devices devices option button to view current devices, and select Register Device to add a new one.

View a contact's devices

Tracking Usage with Meter Readings

CRM.COM provides the ability to keep track of a device’s usage consumption through meter readings.

Eligibility - Only traceable products can support meter readings.
Unit of Measurement (UoM) - For each meter reading, a unit of measurement must be specified, along with the reading type:
- One-time - Each reading is independent of the previous one (e.g., individual energy measurements).
- Cumulative - Each reading depends on the previous one (e.g., a car’s odometer).
Conversion rates - A set of conversion rates can be defined between the meter reading UoM and the UDR UoM. These ensure that readings can be consistently converted into usage records for billing purposes.
Data logging - Meter readings can be submitted either through Self-Service or Back-Office APIs.

Inventory Settings

Navigate to Settings > Commerce > Inventory to configure inventory settings.

Device Statuses

There are pre-defined device statuses that describe the state of a device at any point in time. The business can configure additional statuses, but must be mapped to one of the default states to inherit its behaviour.

Device Locations

Device Locations represent the physical places where devices are stored. For example, a business might have its main warehouse in the capital city, along with depots in other cities and towns across the country. These depots can be defined as Device Locations. On a smaller scale, Device Locations could also be individual sales points where devices are distributed and stored on-site.

Device Locations can be assigned to devices for tracking and management purposes, however, CRM.COM doesn’t provide stock balance functionality at the location level.

Reference Material

You may also find it useful to refer to the following manuals for further reading in relation to Inventory.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

- 1.1 THE ESSENTIALS
  - 1.1.1 Warehouse
  - 1.1.2 Stockable Products
  - 1.1.3 Traceable & Non-traceable Products
  - 1.1.4 Devices
    - 1.1.4.1 State & Status
    - 1.1.4.2 Rentals
    - 1.1.4.3 Ownership
  - 1.1.5 Stock Balance
  - 1.1.6 Warehouse Transactions
  - 1.1.7 Returns Through a Credit Note
2 Managing Inventory
- 2.1 Stock Balance
  - 2.1.1 View Devices
- 2.2 Devices
  - 2.2.1 Bulk Update
- 2.3 Device actions
  - 2.3.1 Change Spatial Location
  - 2.3.2 Change Location
  - 2.3.3 Change Custom Fields
  - 2.3.4 View Additional Information
  - 2.3.5 History
  - 2.3.6 Edit Characteristics
  - 2.3.7 Block Device
- 2.4 Inventory Actions
  - 2.4.1 Stock In
  - 2.4.2 Stock Adjustment
  - 2.4.3 View Transactions
- 2.5 Contact Devices
- 2.6 Tracking Usage with Meter Readings
3 Inventory Settings
- 3.1 Device Statuses
- 3.2 Device Locations
4 Reference Material
- 4.1 Business Network
- 4.2 Contacts
- 4.3 Product Catalogue
- 4.4 Import Devices
- 4.5 Subscriptions
- 4.6 Billing
- 4.7 Financials
- 4.8 Automations

Inventory and Devices

THE ESSENTIALS

Warehouse

Stockable Products

Traceable & Non-traceable Products

Devices

State & Status

Rentals

Ownership

Stock Balance

Warehouse Transactions

Returns Through a Credit Note

Managing Inventory

Stock Balance

View Devices

Devices

Bulk Update

Device actions

Change Spatial Location

Change Location

Change Custom Fields

View Additional Information

History

Edit Characteristics

Block Device

Inventory Actions

Stock In

Stock Adjustment

View Transactions

Contact Devices

Tracking Usage with Meter Readings

Inventory Settings

Device Statuses

Device Locations

Reference Material

Business Network

Contacts

Product Catalogue

Import Devices

Subscriptions

Billing

Financials

Automations