Inventory

Borderbolt tracks every unit of goods that enters and leaves your warehouse so you always know how much stock you have on hand, which lot it came from, and which declaration it was released against. Inventory is organised into stock buckets (one per declarant, customer, commodity code, and warehouse licence) and each bucket holds one or more lots — the individual batches that arrived from a specific source.

This page walks you through the stock overview, how stock is created automatically from arriving shipments, how to enter starting inventory for goods already on hand, and how stock is drawn down when you clear it for free circulation, export it, or co-file it with another customs office.

What stock looks like in Borderbolt

Every lot has four running quantities that always add up:

When you allocate stock to a draft line, the Reserved quantity goes up. When Dutch Customs accepts the consuming declaration, the Drawn quantity goes up and the Reserved quantity comes back down. If the draft is never submitted, you can release the reservation and the stock becomes Available again.

Opening the stock overview

Go to Inventory in the left sidebar. The stock overview lists every active stock bucket for your organisation with:

• The declarant holding the goods
• The customer the stock belongs to (if any)
• The warehouse permit under which it is stored
• The SKU code and commodity code
• The description and country of origin
• Total, Reserved, Available, and Drawn quantities

Use the search box to jump to a specific commodity or SKU, and use the filter strip to narrow by declarant, customer, or status (active, depleted, archived).

Click any row to open the stock detail page. The detail page shows every lot that makes up the bucket, with each lot’s registration reference, customs reference (if it came from a placement), opening and remaining quantity, and its full movement history — every credit, reservation, drawdown, and manual adjustment that touched it, in order.

How stock is created from placements

Most stock in Borderbolt is created automatically. When a placement declaration is released by Dutch Customs, Borderbolt:

1. Reads every line on the placement declaration.
2. Creates (or reuses) a stock bucket for the goods on that line.
3. Creates a new lot in the bucket with the released quantity, the commodity details, and the placement’s registration and customs references.
4. Records a credit movement so the movement trail shows exactly when and why the stock arrived.

You do not need to do anything for this to happen — it is part of the normal release flow. The new stock is available for allocation the moment the release notification arrives.

Entering starting inventory

When you first start using Borderbolt, or when a new customer brings existing stock into an already-running warehouse, you need to tell Borderbolt about the goods that are already on hand. These goods do not have a backing placement declaration in Borderbolt, so they need a starting inventory entry.

To create a starting inventory entry:

1. Go to Inventory → + Starting Inventory.
2. Fill in the starting inventory form:
   • Declarant — who holds the goods under their warehouse permit.
   • Customer — who the goods belong to (optional).
   • Warehouse permit — the permit the goods are stored under (optional).
   • SKU code — your internal product code (optional).
   • Commodity code — the 10-digit code for the goods (required).
   • Description — a plain-language description (required).
   • Country of origin — the two-letter ISO country code (required).
   • Opening quantity — how much stock is on hand right now (required).
   • Quantity unit — the unit of measure; defaults to NAR (pieces).
   • Unit value and Currency — optional; used for reporting.
   • Lot date — when the goods physically arrived; defaults to today. This date controls the FIFO order, so if you are backfilling older stock make sure to set it to the real arrival date.
   • Notes — any free-text context you want to keep with the lot.
3. Click Create starting inventory.

Borderbolt creates the stock bucket (or reuses an existing one), creates the lot, records a credit movement with your user name attached, and takes you to the stock detail page for the new bucket. The lot gets a synthetic registration reference of the form START-… so the rest of the system can refer to it like any other lot. Because starting inventory has no backing placement declaration, no customs reference is attached.

Allocating stock to a consuming declaration

When you build an import clearance, export, or co-filing declaration, every line that consumes warehouse stock needs to be linked to a specific lot. This tells Dutch Customs which registration reference and customs reference to cite as the previous document.

On the declaration detail page, each consuming line shows a Stock Allocation panel:

• If the line is not yet allocated, the panel shows an Allocate stock button.
• If the line is already allocated, the panel shows the lot’s registration and customs references, its remaining quantity, and Change and Release actions.

Click Allocate stock to open the allocation modal. The modal shows:

• The FIFO suggestion — the oldest lot in the matching bucket that has enough Available quantity. This is the default, and for most workflows it is the right choice because it clears older stock first.
• A manual picker listing every other lot in the same bucket with Available quantity, so you can override the suggestion if you need to.

Pick a lot and click Allocate. Borderbolt:

1. Reserves the requested quantity on the chosen lot.
2. Links the consuming line to the lot.
3. Automatically fills in the previous document references on the consuming line — the lot’s registration reference and, for placement-backed stock, the parent placement’s customs reference. You do not need to enter these by hand.

If no single lot has enough Available stock to cover the line, the allocation is refused with an Insufficient stock message. In that case, split the consuming line into two smaller lines and allocate each one separately.

Changing or releasing an allocation

While the consuming declaration is still a draft, you can change your mind:

• Change releases the current reservation and opens the picker so you can allocate a different lot.
• Release clears the allocation completely; the stock returns to Available, and the previous-document references are removed from the line.

Once Dutch Customs has accepted the declaration, the allocation is final. The Drawn quantity on the lot goes up, the Reserved quantity comes down, and the movement trail records a drawdown movement. If the lot reaches zero Remaining quantity, Borderbolt marks it depleted and it stops appearing in future FIFO suggestions.

Movement trail

Every change to a lot — credit, reserve, release, drawdown, manual adjustment — is recorded as a movement. The movement trail on the stock detail page shows:

• The movement type (credit, reserve, release, drawdown, adjust)
• The signed quantity (positive for incoming, negative for outgoing)
• The balance on the lot after the movement
• The declaration that triggered it (if any)
• The user who triggered it (for manual actions)
• The timestamp

The movement trail is append-only: movements are never deleted or edited. If you need to correct a lot’s quantity — for example after a physical stock count — use a manual adjustment with a reason. The adjustment appears as its own movement with your user name and the reason visible.

Produce a Warehouse Audit File

If you participate in the chain procedure, Dutch Customs requires a monthly stock audit report called a Warehouse Audit File. Borderbolt generates it directly from your stock ledger — see the Warehouse Audit File guide for how to create, download, and submit one.