Getting started with Orbit Inventory
Audience: someone setting Inventory up on a new tenant, in order, without backtracking.
1. Why the order matters
Every object in Inventory points at one created before it. Build them out of order and you hit dropdowns with nothing in them:
A raw material cannot be saved without a unit. A variation is only meaningful once its attributes exist. A production order is only possible once the finished good has a BOM.
2. Step by step
Step 1 · Select a project
Every Inventory screen is project-scoped. Pick the project in the Platform Context chip in the header before anything else.
Inventory screens render an empty state rather than a prompt when no project is selected. This is the single most common "the app is broken" report on the module.
Step 2 · Units of measure
Go to Units of Measure. A new tenant is not empty here — the module ships defaults, and two buttons will fill it further:
| Control | Does |
|---|---|
| Seed defaults | Inserts the standard unit set |
| Discover | Scans existing data for units you are using but have not defined |
| AI Suggestions | Proposes units from a description of your business |
Do this first. Nothing else can be created without it.
Step 3 · Categories and attributes
Categories classify products and also drive storefront navigation, so name them the way a customer would read them. They nest.
Attributes are reusable option sets — Spice Level: Mild / Medium / Hot. Create them before products, because they are what variations are built from.
Step 4 · Raw materials
Raw materials are what recipes consume. Each needs a unit.
A raw material is never sold and never appears on a storefront. If customers can buy it, it is a product.
Step 5 · Products and variations
Create a product, then give it variations — the sellable rows, each with its own SKU and price.
A product with no variation has nothing to sell. A product with three has three prices.
Step 6 · Bills of material
If you manufacture, give each variation a bill of materials: which raw materials, how much of each, and a wastage allowance.
Skip this if you only resell bought-in goods — but then you cannot use Production.
Step 7 · Start recording operations
Now the operations half becomes usable:
| To record | Go to |
|---|---|
| Stock arriving | Goods receipts |
| Manufacturing | Production |
| A counter sale | Direct sales |
| A stock count or breakage | Adjustments · Wastage |
3. What this does not set up
| Not covered here | Where it lives |
|---|---|
| Selling online, packages, coupons, orders | Orbit Storefront |
| The tax regime behind a product's tax category | Finance |
| Page layout for product pages | Experience Manager |
| Bulk product image upload | Storefront — Allow Bulk product Image Upload |
4. A shortcut worth knowing
If you are populating a catalogue from scratch, two features skip most of the typing:
- Product import — a CSV of products and variations at once,
gated on its own
products.importpermission. - AI-assisted creation — generate units, categories, attributes, raw materials and products from a description. Output is staged for review, never written blind.
Both still require Steps 1–3 first: an import that references a unit you have not created will fail on those rows.
5. Sanity check
You are set up correctly when all of these are true:
- A project is selected and the catalogue list shows your products
- Every product has at least one variation with a SKU and a price
- Products that should be sellable show the STORE badge
- Manufactured variations have a BOM with quantities
- Raw materials show a unit, a reorder level and a purchase price
- A test goods receipt appears in the ledger
That is expected, and it is the module's most confusing behaviour. Recording a movement and setting a stock level are two different operations here — see How stock is counted.