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Stock item status on the General tab

Inventory > Stock Items > [Item] > General

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Definition

describes where an item sits in its operational lifecycle. It controls whether the item counts toward availability and can be assigned to orders. Three Status Values: The status field on the Article resource holds exactly these three values. There are no other statuses — situations like a lost or sold item are handled with Inactive (see below). Status is independent from State (In / Out — physical location).

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Where do I use it?

You see and edit status on each Stock Item’s General tab, and as a column and filter on the stock items table. The status also shows as a chip in the item header: Active (green), Draft (orange), Inactive (red). Status affects:
  • Availability calculations — only Active items count toward Available To Sell (ATS). Availability queries join stock items on status = 'active'.
  • Order fulfillment — only Active items can be assigned to new orders.
  • Reports — filter by status to separate operational inventory from retired inventory.
  • Listings — listings reading from a SKU only count Active Stock Items.
Read more: Stock Items — General Tab.

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Key Properties

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When to use each status

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Active

The default for any item ready to participate in operations. New Stock Items are created with status: 'active' unless you specify otherwise.
  • Rentals or sales available now.
  • Items in working condition.
  • Items kept on shelves or in fleet circulation.

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Inactive

Use Inactive when an item should be excluded from operations indefinitely.
  • Under long-term repair or refurbishment.
  • Retired but kept on record.
  • Quarantined pending inspection.
  • Lost, stolen, or written off.
  • Sold and no longer tracked operationally.
  • Demo or test units not for customer use.
For temporary unavailability with a known end date (a one-week service window, a photo shoot, holding an item for a specific date), use a scheduled event of type reservation instead. Reservations expire automatically — Inactive requires manual reactivation. See Stock Item Events.

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Draft

Draft marks an item whose registration is not finished. The registration flow creates draft records while you fill in details (for example, the AI-assisted register dialog creates a draft to attach uploaded images to) and promotes them when registration completes. Once an item is registered, the status dropdown in the admin only offers Active and Inactive — the UI does not move a registered item back to Draft.

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Retiring an item

There is no separate “retired”, “lost”, or “sold” status. To retire an item, set its status to Inactive:
  • From the item’s General tab or the bulk action on the table.
  • Via PUT /articles/:id with {"status": "inactive"}.
  • Via POST /articles/:id/inactivate — this endpoint also walks the item’s upcoming bookings and tries to reassign each one to another available Stock Item, so retiring an item does not silently strand its orders.
All history — ledger, events, media, documents — stays on the record. The item drops out of ATS and can no longer be assigned to new orders.
Retiring with a status change instead of deletion preserves the item’s full history — purchase records, rental history, ledger entries — without keeping it in availability calculations. To record why an item went Inactive (lost, sold, damaged), add a note event or a ledger entry.

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Status transitions

  • Draft → Active — the normal outcome of registration.
  • Active ↔ Inactive — freely reversible. Reactivating an item makes it count toward ATS again for any range it is not already committed to. No history is lost in either direction.
  • → Draft — not offered in the admin once the item is registered.
Every status change is recorded in the item’s activity log as an update event carrying the changed value and the user who made it, so you can reconstruct when each change happened.

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What changes immediately

When you set an Active item to Inactive:
  • Item drops out of ATS within the next availability read.
  • Item is excluded from new order assignment.
  • Existing orders that already include the item are not modified — reassign or handle those manually (or use POST /articles/:id/inactivate, which attempts the reassignment for you).
  • Ledger, events, media, and documents stay intact.
When you set an Inactive item to Active:
  • Item starts counting toward ATS for any range it is not already committed to.
  • Item becomes eligible for new orders again.
  • No history is lost.

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Lifecycle

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Creation

New Stock Items default to status: 'active'. You can override at creation:
  • Set status: 'inactive' when importing items that still need inspection — they stay out of availability until you flip them.
  • status: 'draft' is normally set by the registration flow, not by hand.

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Modification

Change status from the General tab on the item detail, the bulk action on the table, or via the API — see the API reference for the articles endpoints. The status field on the list endpoint’s filters accepts one of the three values. For mass deactivation (e.g. end-of-season retirement), update many via the bulk-edit UI.

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Deletion

Prefer setting status to Inactive over deletion. Deletion is destructive — DELETE /articles/:id removes the article record and its inline associations.

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FAQs

  • Status (Active / Inactive / Draft) — operational lifecycle, set manually.
  • State (In / Out) — physical location, set automatically by fulfillment.
An Active item can be Out (with a customer). An Inactive item can be In (in your storage, off duty). The two are independent. Read more: Stock Item State.
Set the status to Inactive. There is no dedicated Lost or Sold status. To keep the reason on record, add a note to the item’s timeline or record a ledger entry. The item’s full history stays available for follow-up, accounting, and reporting.
Use a reservation when you know when the item will be back available — reservations expire automatically. Use Inactive when the timing is open-ended or indefinite.
Open Inventory > Stock Items and filter the Status column to Inactive. The same filter is available via the API on the status field.
Yes. Setting an item Inactive does not retroactively cancel orders that already include it. Handle those orders manually — refund the line, reassign to another Stock Item, or cancel. The POST /articles/:id/inactivate endpoint attempts the reassignment automatically.
Yes. Change the status back to Active. All historical data is preserved. This is useful for items back from repair, recovered items, or returned sales.
Yes — a draft item shows an orange Draft chip in its header. Drafts come from unfinished registrations. Once registered, the admin does not offer returning an item to Draft.

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Developer Reference

Stock item status is read and updated via the articles endpoints.

API: Articles

Open the endpoint in the API reference.

Stock Items

Full Stock Item model and lifecycle

Stock Item State

In vs Out — physical location dimension

Stock Item Events

Reservations, notes, activity log

Workflows

Automate inventory operations