Available Actually Means Available
Available quantity is what is left after commitments and quarantined stock come out. Nobody has to keep a private spreadsheet of which pallets are already spoken for.
Inventory Planning
Know what you can actually build and ship
Fiddle sets real stock aside for real orders, in priority order — so every work order and every shipment tells you plainly whether it is covered or short.
- The same stock can never be promised to two orders
- Shortages show up in planning, not on the shop floor
- Drag an urgent order up and everything below re-solves
Built into the work orders, purchasing and fulfillment you already run in Fiddle.
Drag to reprioritize
Coverage re-solves
Covered or short
On every order, before work starts
Stock first, then incoming
Allocated from the top down
Drag to reprioritize
Rank is the only control
Ranked per site
Production and shipping each rank their own
Why it matters
Stop guessing who gets the stock
The gap between what is on the shelf and what is already spoken for is where most late orders come from.
Stock Can Only Be Promised Once
A commitment is a hard claim on real units at a real site. The same kilogram cannot be counted toward a work order and a customer order at the same time.
Priority, Not Paperwork
Allocation is a consequence of rank. Drag the urgent order up and everything below it recalculates. There is no allocation screen to maintain and no line-by-line assignment to redo.
Shortages Surface Before the Floor Does
Every order carries a coverage status. Short quantities are visible on the list, not discovered by an operator standing at an empty rack with a pick list in hand.
Incoming Counts as Coverage, Not as Stock
An open purchase order can cover a shortage on paper, but it only becomes a commitment when the goods are received. Orders leaning on incoming supply are labeled as such.
Recalculated on Every Event
Receipts, voids, adjustments, cancellations and new orders all trigger a recalculation for the affected item and site. Gains land at the top of the queue, losses land at the bottom.
What is included
Demand and allocation, end to end
From the moment demand is raised to the moment material is consumed.
Inventory Demand
Required quantities raised by work orders, fulfillment orders and demand plans
Inventory Commitments
Hard allocations of real units, with create, transfer and release history
Priority Queues
Separate drag-to-reorder queues for work orders and for fulfillment orders
BOM Coverage Roll-up
One status per work order, rolled up from every component on the bill of materials
Coverage Statuses
Covered, covered by incoming, arriving late, or short — on every order
Requirements & MRP
What is needed, what is covered, and what still has to be bought or made
Depletion Queues
Consumption draws down the commitment that authorized it, in order
Transfer & Release
Move an allocation between orders or hand it back, with a full audit trail
Protected In-Flight Work
Orders already in production, picking or packing keep the stock they hold
In practice
Where commitments earn their keep
Shared materials, tight supply and competing orders — the situations where a single availability number stops being enough.
One Bulk Powder, Six Work Orders
A contract manufacturer runs six blends off the same bulk active. The queue decides which batches are covered from the current lot and which wait for the next receipt.
Covered and Short known before scheduling
A Thousand Orders, One Short SKU
A D2C brand ships hundreds of orders a day. Instead of reviewing them one by one, the team sees the handful of products actually causing the hold-up.
Batches contain only fully committed orders
The Key Account Jumps the Line
A major retailer moves a delivery forward. The order is dragged to the top of the fulfillment queue and the stock re-allocates from the orders that can wait.
Displaced orders re-flagged immediately
Lot-Level Coverage
A beverage producer commits specific lots to production runs, so short-dated stock is consumed in order and nothing is quietly claimed twice.
Commitments recorded per item and site
The Late Purchase Order
A component shipment slips past a build date. The affected work order flags that its coverage arrives after it is due, while everything else stays covered.
Late incoming supply called out separately
Customer-Owned and Shared Stock
A co-manufacturer runs jobs for several brands from one warehouse. Each job holds its own commitments, so one brand’s materials are never absorbed by another’s run.
Allocation traceable to the order that holds it
The model
Required and committed: two numbers, not one
Most systems have a single “reserved” figure that quietly means both “someone asked for it” and “it is set aside.” Fiddle splits them, and the split is what makes every downstream number trustworthy.
Required
Demand. A work order, a fulfillment order or a demand plan has asked for a quantity by a date. Required tells you what the business has promised. It does not touch a single unit of stock.
Committed
Supply. Real units, at a real site, set aside for one specific order. A commitment can be transferred to another order or released back to the pool, and every move is recorded.
Which makes availability a definition, not an opinion
Available = In stock − Committed − Quarantined
One stock. One owner.
One unit cannot cover two promises
Four boxes can back four orders. The fifth stays visibly short until new supply arrives or a higher-priority order releases what it holds.
Every commitment keeps its order, item and site attached, so the answer is traceable instead of implied.
How allocation happens
Rank the queue. Stock flows down it.
Production ranks its work orders, fulfillment ranks its shipments — each in its own drawer, both following the same rule. The order at the top takes what it needs, the next takes what is left, and it keeps going until the stock runs out.
Manage priority · Work orders
Headquarters · 42 work orders waiting on materials
DiscardSave priority
- 1WO-1042
Elderberry Gummies · 40,000 ct
CoveredDue Aug 4 - 2WO-1044
Daily Greens · 18,000 ct
CoveredDue Aug 5 - 3WO-1043
Immunity Blend · 25,000 ct
Covered · incomingDue Aug 7 - 4WO-1051
Sleep Support · 12,000 ct
Arrives after dueDue Aug 8 - 5WO-1052
Recovery Blend · 30,000 ct
Short · 2 materialsDue Aug 9
Committed from stock on handCovered by incoming supplyIncoming, but after the due dateShort — no stock, no coverage
Above is the work-order queue, opened from the work order list. Fulfillment gets the same drawer on the fulfillment order list, ranking shipments instead of builds. Two queues, one set of rules — and on the shipping side the rank doubles as the pick sequence.
Rank is the only control
No locks, no pins, no per-line allocation. If a job deserves the stock, drag it up. Everything below it re-solves against what is left.
Preview before you commit
The drawer is a sandbox. Drag to see who gains and who loses coverage, then save the whole arrangement at once — or discard it.
It never stops recalculating
Receipts, voids, counts and new orders all trigger a re-solve for that item and site. Gains land top-down, losses are taken bottom-up.
Production is different
A work order is not one item. It is a whole recipe.
A shipment needs the finished goods on its lines. A build needs every raw material, component and piece of packaging in its bill of materials — and it cannot start until all of them are there.
5
WO-1052
Short · 2 materialsRecovery Blend · 30,000 ct · 5 materials
Needs attention RM-3340 | Zinc citrate 340 kg PK-0090 | Stand-up pouch 4,000 ea
MaterialIn stockDemandCommittedShort
- In stock1,200 kgDemand540 kgCommitted540 kgShort—
Elderberry extract
RM-2201
- In stock860 kgDemand300 kgCommitted300 kgShort—
Pectin gelling agent
RM-1180
- In stock60 kgDemand400 kgCommitted60 kgShort340 kg
Zinc citrate
RM-3340
- In stock26,000 eaDemand30,000 eaCommitted26,000 eaShort4,000 ea
Stand-up pouch, 30 ct
PK-0090
- In stock52,000 eaDemand30,000 eaCommitted30,000 eaShort—
Front label, 30 ct
LB-0042
Three of five materials are fully committed. The build still cannot run.
One status, rolled up from every line
The bar on a work order is the average coverage across its whole bill of materials. It only reads fully covered when every component is covered — one missing ingredient makes the build short, however plentiful everything else is.
Only the problems get named
Needs attention lists just the short components, with the code, the name and the exact shortfall. Covered lines stay quiet. A build with sixty lines shows the first five and a “+N more” — you read the exceptions, not the recipe.
The fix is usually a purchase order, not a reshuffle
When a component is short across the whole queue, no amount of dragging helps — the stock does not exist. Naming the component points straight at the thing to buy or expedite.
For production
What it means for work orders
A work order that cannot be built is a scheduling problem, not a shop-floor surprise. Commitments move that discovery to the planning stage.
The materials tab stops being a wish list
Every component line shows what is committed to this build, what is still available to commit, and what is inbound. A work order is either materially ready or it is not, and it says so.
Schedule by what can actually run
Coverage status appears on the work order list, so the planning conversation moves from “what is due” to “what can be built.” Sort the list by priority and the top of it is the run sequence.
Jobs in production keep their material
Once a work order is in production, its committed stock is protected. Reprioritizing the planning queue never strips material from a run that has already started.
Consumption draws down the commitment
Issuing material to the floor reduces the commitment that authorized it, so the shop-floor picture and the inventory picture cannot drift apart.
WO-1043 · Materials
Immunity Blend · 25,000 ct · Priority 3
MaterialRequiredCommittedCoverage
- Required480 kgCommitted480 kg
Elderberry extract
RM-2201
Covered - Required210 kgCommitted210 kg
Pectin gelling agent
RM-1180
Covered - Required96 kgCommitted56 kg
Zinc citrate
RM-3340
40 kg incoming - Required40,000 eaCommitted40,000 ea
Stand-up pouch, 60 ct
PK-0090
Covered
One component short. The build is covered only if PO-4471 lands before Aug 7.
For fulfillment
What it means for shipping
Nobody reviews a thousand orders one at a time. The point is to know which orders can go out now, which are waiting on a receipt, and exactly which products are the problem.
Ready to fulfill
784
Every required item committed
Waiting for inventory
173
Covered by incoming supply
Affected by short products
85
Traced to 6 products
“Ready” has one meaning
An order is ready to fulfill only when every required item holds a commitment. Not “probably in stock” — held, for that order, at that site.
Batches only contain orders that can ship
Building a batch pulls from ready orders. Waiting, short, on-hold and already-batched orders stay out, so a wave does not fall apart halfway through the pick.
Priority doubles as pick sequence
The fulfillment queue is ranked per site, so the order you drag to the top is both first for stock and first to be picked.
A thousand orders collapse to a few products
A product-level view turns a day of e-commerce volume into the short list of SKUs actually holding things up — with the affected orders one click away.
Picking, packing and staged stock is protected
Once an order is being worked, its inventory is off the table for reallocation. Nothing gets pulled out of a tote because a new order arrived.
One coverage picture
The same truth reaches the floor and the dock
Stock on hand flows first. Incoming supply can cover what remains. Anything still uncovered stays unmistakably short.
Committed from stock on handCovered by incoming supplyStill waiting for coverage
Every path that starts with a short product ends back in the flow your team already uses — search, select, batch, pick, pack, buy the label, ship. The inventory view is a way in, not a dashboard to get stuck in.
Questions
How allocation works in Fiddle
Find answers to common questions about this feature.
What is the difference between required and committed?
Required is demand — an order has asked for a quantity. Committed is supply — real units at a real site have been set aside for that order. An order can be fully required and not committed at all, which is exactly the situation most teams cannot see today. Available quantity is your stock on hand minus what is committed and minus anything quarantined.
Do I have to allocate stock to orders manually?
No. Allocation follows priority. Production ranks its work orders and fulfillment ranks its shipments, each in its own queue, seeded from due dates. Stock then flows down the ranking from the top: the first order takes what it needs, the next takes what remains, and so on. You only intervene when an order needs to move — drag it up, and everything below recalculates.
What does covered mean for a work order with fifty components?
It means all fifty are covered. A work order draws every line on its bill of materials, so its status is a roll-up: the coverage bar averages across the whole BOM, and the order only reads fully covered when no line is short. Because a list of fifty components is unreadable, the queue names only the ones that need attention — component code, name and the exact shortfall — and shows the first five with a “+N more” toggle.
What happens when I drag an urgent order to the top?
The drawer previews the result before you save: the urgent order picks up the stock it needs, and any lower-ranked orders that lose coverage are flagged in the same view. Nothing is written until you save, and you can discard the change and go back to where you were.
Does an open purchase order count as coverage?
It counts as coverage, not as a commitment. An order relying on a purchase order shows as covered by incoming supply, and if the expected receipt lands after the order is due, that is called out separately. The commitment is created when the goods are actually received.
Can a reprioritization take stock away from a job already underway?
No. Work orders in production and fulfillment orders that are picking, packing or staged keep what they hold. They sit outside the draggable queue by rule, so reprioritizing the planning queue never pulls material out from under work in progress.
What happens when a receipt is voided or a count goes down?
Physical truth is never blocked. Downward corrections always post, and the queue re-solves afterwards: gains are applied from the top down and losses are taken from the bottom up, so the orders closest to shipping are the last to lose their coverage.
How does this relate to demand planning and MRP?
Demand plans are planning-level demand and stay outside the operational queues. Requirements and MRP show what is needed and what is still uncovered, so buying and production decisions come from the same numbers the queue uses to allocate.
See Your Stock Where It Is Actually Committed
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