How Inventory Works

The Inventory page is where you track the stock you keep on hand, such as granite, vases, and the services you offer, so you always know what you have and what to reorder. Open Inventory from the main navigation and it goes straight to your table, with no intro screen in the way.

This article covers the everyday inventory experience for a shop with a single office. If your company runs more than one location, see If you run more than one office near the end.

Categories and tabs

Your items are organized into tabs. Out of the box you'll see Granite, Vases, Other, Services, Urns, QR Codes and Vaults, with a Photos tab that exists but stays hidden until you turn it on. Each tab has its own search and filters, so you can narrow a long list quickly, for example granite by type or color. The search understands SKUs and sizes: a number is matched against the real number in a SKU such as GRN-00448, not its zero padding, and a size search such as 1x1 finds the stock in that size. A Clear filters button appears once a filter is active.

The tab bar is fully customizable. Click Customize tabs (the gear button next to the tabs) to drag your tabs into a new order, show or hide any tab, and add quick-access tabs for individual granite types, like just Slant, just Bevel or just Footstone. At least one tab must stay visible. Your layout is saved to your own account, so reordering or hiding a tab only changes what you see, not your teammates. Reset tabs restores the default Granite, Vases, Other, Services, Urns, QR Codes and Vaults bar.

Alongside these categories, a Granite Tiles inventory type is available for shops that stock granite tile, so you can track tiles as their own items separate from monument granite.

Vases, photos, urns, QR codes and vaults: one catalogue with Settings

The vase, photo, urn, QR code and vault options you set up in Settings → Accessories and the matching products in Inventory are one catalogue. Add, edit, disable or delete an option on either side and the other side follows, price and vendor cost included. The Urns tab carries each urn's capacity and material, the QR Codes tab each QR code's brand and size, the Vases tab covers granite, bronze and metal vases, and the Vaults tab holds your vaults, with Total Vault Items, Total Vault Value and Vaults Needing Reorder at the top.

A product that mirrors a Settings option shows a small icon whose tooltip reads Mirrored from Settings > Accessories, and its edit popup reminds you that price and detail changes made there update the accessory too.

Vase price groups. In Settings, a vase row is a price group: the colours it offers at one price. Change the price of one colour's own product in Inventory and that colour moves to a Settings row at its new price, joining a row that already has exactly that price and cost, or starting a new one. The other colours keep their price, and quotes you have already written are not touched.

Per-location prices. On a multi-office account, Settings keeps a mirrored item's main price. A retail or wholesale price set for one location stays in Inventory; change the main price with Edit item.

Matching what you already had. If you had accessories in Settings and products in Inventory before, MonuDesk pairs them in the background. An exact match at a compatible price is linked for you, and anything it is unsure about waits for your decision. A banner at the top of Inventory and of Settings → Accessories then reads, for example, 3 accessories need to be matched to inventory. Click Review now to open Accessory matching.

• Each card shows the accessory and the inventory item MonuDesk suggests. Pick the item it really is, choose Create new to make a product for it, or Skip.

• A vase offered in several colours at one price gets one card for the whole price group, with its colours and the vase's other price groups listed. Pick the inventory item that holds the stock for all of those colours, choose Create one item to track them together, choose Each colour separately to give every colour its own item, or Skip. When some of those colours already have their own item, the card offers Each colour separately or Skip.

• When the item you pick is priced differently from Settings, choose Keep Settings price or Use Inventory price.

• Auto-accept strong matches links every accessory whose best suggestion scores high enough, keeping the Settings price, and leaves everything else on the page for you.

The banner can also tell you that some inventory items need more details, such as a vase's material, style and size, before they appear in Settings > Accessories. Open the item and fill those in.

Configure Options. Inventory → Configure Options opens the same editor as Configure accessories on Settings → Accessories. If you save while a variant is missing a required field, MonuDesk outlines each empty required field in red, tints the row, jumps to the first flagged category and item, and puts a red dot on any other category or item with flagged rows. The message asks you to fill in the fields outlined in red and save again.

While it saves, Save Changes counts up, for example Saving 3 of 7..., and a row that could not be saved stays marked in red with Not saved: and the reason. The next save tries that row again. Discarding drops all unsaved changes.

Sorting the table

Click any column header to sort the table by that column: size, finish, color, price, quantity, or name. The first click sorts ascending, the second descending, and the third returns to the default order. Sorting applies within the tab you are on, and each tab keeps its own sort, so you can scan granite by size while your vases stay sorted by price.

Adding and editing items

Use Quick Add at the top of a tab to add an item inline, or click an item to edit it in a popup. For most items you record a Cost, what you pay your vendor, and a Retail price, what you charge the customer. Both are optional. Services are a little different: they use a required Retail price and have no quantity.

Already have a stock list? Import it from a spreadsheet instead of typing it in: open Settings → Import, pick the Inventory card and upload a .csv or .xlsx file. You check what MonuDesk found before anything is imported, and Import history can undo the run. The small (i) next to the Inventory title points there too. See How to Import Your Data from a Spreadsheet. If your items are in QuickBooks Online, see Import Your Inventory from QuickBooks instead.

Every granite item takes a Type, and it is required. The dropdown offers Die, Bevel, Slant, Base, Marker, Ledger, Footstone, Foundation, Monolith, Custom, Double Heart and Tiles. The same list drives the granite Type filter, the inline type editor in the table, and the granite type tabs under Customize tabs.

Footstone stock is its own bucket. A footstone on a quote matches and deducts Footstone rows only, never Marker rows, so receiving footstones never moves your marker count. A footstone lies flat, so, as with Marker, Ledger and Bevel, size matching reads its second and third numbers as Width and Thickness. Stone prices auto-fill from inventory for footstones the same way they do for every other type.

Granite size is stored as a single size value rather than as separate width, height, and thickness columns. You enter the Width, Height, and Thickness, and MonuDesk combines them into one size that shows as W×H×T in the table, for example 24×12×4. Each box takes decimals, such as 24.5.

The ft-in / in toggle decides whether you enter and read sizes in feet and inches or in inches. It lists ft-in first, starts on ft-in, and remembers the last unit you picked. That choice is shared with the unit toggle in New Quote, so picking a unit in either place carries to the other, and each person on the same computer keeps their own.

Slant granite takes a dual height. The Height field is free text for slants, so you can type a height such as 10/2, and it shows in the height position of the item's size. The dual height is kept everywhere that stone turns up: the inventory grid, Smart Prefill, the order overview, the shop ticket, and the purchase order.

For Bevel granite the Thickness field is free text, so you can enter a bevel ratio in X/Y form such as 6/4, and the size displays that ratio in place of a plain thickness.

Finish codes. Two trade codes, PFT BRP and STL BRP, can be picked in inventory as well as on the base finish slider and the flat-marker finish slider, and they print as those codes on English-language documents (German-language documents spell the finish out in words). Flat markers have their own finish slider, covering the top and edges only.

To remove an item, hover its row and click the trash icon on the right, then confirm. You can also delete from inside the edit popup. Either way the row disappears the moment you confirm and you stay exactly where you were, on the same page and at the same spot in the list, so clearing out a long list of discontinued stock is one pass down the page instead of dozens of trips through a popup. Deleting archives the item rather than wiping it, so it drops out of every inventory list while your past orders keep their history.

SKU numbers are unique within your own company rather than across all of MonuDesk, so you can run your own numbering even if another company already uses the same SKU.

Reusing a SKU. An item you delete gives up its SKU, so you can add a new item under the same SKU straight away. Only items still in your list reserve a SKU. If an archived item is ever brought back, MonuDesk checks its SKU again, because it may have been given to a new item in the meantime.

Reorder alerts

Set a reorder point on an item and MonuDesk warns you when stock runs low. An orange Reorder tag appears on the row when the quantity drops to that point, and a red Out of stock tag shows when it reaches zero. A small dot also appears on the Inventory icon in the navigation whenever any item needs reordering, so you can spot it from anywhere.

The summary bar

Three cards at the top of each tab summarize that category: the total number of items, the total value, and how many are needing reorder. They update as you add, edit, and remove items.

The Needing Reorder card is also a filter. Click it and the list narrows to items at or below their reorder point; click it again to clear it. It works on every tab and combines with that tab's search and filters, so you can hold a color or type filter and still see only what needs reordering. Items that never had a reorder point set are not counted by the card and do not appear when you filter with it.

Printing a count sheet

For a stock count, use the Print and Download CSV buttons at the top of the Inventory page. Both use exactly the items the table is showing, so filter first by tab, location, search or any other filter, and count one section at a time.

Print opens your browser's print dialog with an Inventory count sheet. Its header lists the filters you used and when it was printed, and the table has the columns Item, SKU, Size, Color, Location, In MNDSK (the quantity MonuDesk has on record), Counted and Notes. Counted and Notes are left blank to write on. Services have no stock, so they are left off. Download CSV gives you the same items as a spreadsheet.

QuickBooks-linked items

If your QuickBooks Online (QBO) account is connected, every item linked to a QuickBooks product carries a small green qb badge in a narrow column at the front of the row. Hover it to see that the item is synced to QuickBooks for this location, when it last synced, and its QuickBooks item ID. Unlinked rows show nothing, and the column disappears altogether when nothing on the page is linked.

The link itself is yours to set: an item's edit popup carries a QuickBooks link field with a picker of your QuickBooks items, so each product is tied to the exact QuickBooks item it syncs to.

Whether a stone bills its die and its base as one line or two is set on the Settings → Stone Itemisation page (How stones are itemised). It is not on the Settings → Inventory page. When a stone bills as two lines, the base line bills against its own product, so the base's on-hand quantity moves separately from the die's. Billed as one line, the die and base bill to a single QBO item, so QuickBooks does not track base stock separately.

When the item is linked but that location's inventory sync is switched off, the badge is grayed out with a line through it and warns that changes you make now will not be sent to QuickBooks, and will not be applied retroactively when sync is switched back on. In the All Locations view the wording becomes a count, for example Synced to QuickBooks in 2 of 3 locations.

Wholesale pricing

If your shop sells wholesale, go to Settings → Inventory and turn on Enable wholesale pricing. Your inventory then shows a wholesale price column alongside retail. It is off by default, so retail only shops never see columns they do not need.

When you build a quote for a wholesale contact (any contact category other than Retail), the stone configuration shows a Wholesale Price field instead of the retail price, and it fills automatically from the matching inventory item when there is one. Quotes for retail contacts keep using the retail price. The same stone can carry both a retail and a wholesale price on one inventory row, and Auto sync saves the wholesale price from wholesale orders the same way it saves retail. You set each contact's category on the contact record. See How to Manage Contacts.

Using inventory in a new quote

When you build a quote, inventory helps you fill in Step 3. After you choose a Monument Type and Color, a Smart Prefill dropdown lists matching items from your inventory and from past orders, each with its retail price. There is also a search bar above the Monument Type cards where you can search your inventory and past orders by SKU, color, or size. Picking a result fills in everything MonuDesk knows from that stone's last configuration: the colors, sizes, finishes, lettering, and the stone price. It never fills the form on its own, so you always click the row you want, and every field stays editable afterward. When you pick an item from inventory, a small pill confirms the order is linked to that inventory item. The stone's QuickBooks link travels with it, so when that item is tied to a QuickBooks product, the exact product you picked is the one that reaches the QuickBooks invoice.

That link holds only while the stone still describes the item you picked. Retype the size, switch to a different color, change the monument type, or set the top shape to Custom, and MonuDesk drops the link: the price you enter stops writing back to the original item, and that item is not the one pulled from stock when you confirm the order.

Adding stock automatically

MonuDesk can keep your inventory in step with your orders so you do not have to add every stone by hand. With Auto sync on, saving a confirmed order adds the stones on that order to your inventory, one row per stone, and skips anything that already matches so you do not get duplicates. Auto sync is on by default and can be turned off in your inventory settings.

Overriding a stone's price on a quote updates the matching inventory item instead of creating a duplicate SKU, so adjusting a price on an order will not spawn a second row for the same stone.

Bevel and slant stones match on their slash sizes too. A slant's dual height such as 10/2 or a bevel's 6/4 thickness is read as part of the size, so Auto sync finds the row you already have and updates its price instead of adding a second one.

An item added this way starts at a quantity of 0, since MonuDesk does not know how many you actually keep on hand. Open the item and set the real number you have in your yard.

To capture stock from work you did before, go to Settings → Inventory and click Backfill inventory from past orders. It scans your past orders and adds any missing stones, updates prices that changed, and skips anything already in your inventory. Vases, photos, urns, QR codes and vaults need no backfill: they come from your options in Settings → Accessories. You will see a summary of what was added, updated, and skipped.

Adding stock from a received purchase order

When the stones you ordered arrive, mark the purchase order completed and MonuDesk offers to add them to your on-hand counts.

1. Open PO Tracking in the main navigation, a Pro page, and find the purchase order.

2. Click the check icon, Mark completed.

3. MonuDesk opens Add stones to inventory?, which reads "{PO number} is marked completed. Add the stones on this purchase order to your inventory quantity?"

While it works out what is on the purchase order the dialog shows Checking the stones on this purchase order…, then lists every inventory product it will top up, by name, with +N on the right. The same product across a bulk purchase order's orders is merged into one line. Underneath, a Won't be added: section names each stone line it cannot add and why, such as "Die — not linked to inventory" or "Monument (base) — base not linked to inventory".

Click Add to inventory to apply it or Don't add to leave your counts alone. Either answer keeps the purchase order marked completed. Adding shows a green Added 3 stones to inventory message; when some lines could not be added it names them so you can top those up by hand. If nothing would be added, the dialog says so and offers a single Close button.

Only stone pieces move: whole monument, die, base and sub-base lines. Vases, porcelains, etchings, services and the foundation never change inventory here. The quantity added is what the vendor was asked to cut, and each product's quantity goes up and is marked confirmed.

A stone is matched only through the inventory product linked to it on the order, never guessed from a name or a size. MonuDesk records that link when the order's stones are added to or matched against inventory on save, when you pick a product in the QuickBooks products card on Review & Create, or when stock is deducted. The link is read again at the moment you receive, so a stone you linked after the purchase order went out still restocks.

Each purchase order adds its stones once. Reopen it and complete it again and MonuDesk answers Inventory already updated. If nothing could be added the first time because no products were linked, a later receive still adds them once the stones are linked.

To stop being asked, tick Always add received stones to inventory — don't ask again and click Add to inventory. From then on, marking a purchase order completed in that browser adds its stones for you and still shows the result message. It is remembered in the browser where you set it.

For the full walkthrough on the PO Tracking side, see Marking a Purchase Order Completed and Adding the Stones to Inventory.

Reusing a stone you already stock

When a stone you configure matches an item in your inventory, MonuDesk asks before it touches your counts.

• Save as Confirmed Order opens Take these from your inventory?, which reads "This order uses items you have in inventory." It lists the matched stones, and any linked accessories, with what is on hand. Deduct 1 unit (or Deduct N units) takes them off the shelf, and Don't deduct leaves your stock untouched.

• Save as Quote and drafts never change your counts.

• An item already at 0 on hand is marked out of stock (0 on hand), nothing to deduct, and nothing is taken from it.

• Stock is pulled once per stone or base slot, so holding a quote and confirming it later never deducts twice.

When you confirm the order. Confirming the order is the other moment stock comes off. If the stone was linked to an inventory item when the quote was built, MonuDesk shows a compact confirm naming that exact stone: its name, SKU, color, dimensions, and what is on hand, with Deduct and Skip. An order with more than one stone lists one row per stone or base slot, and each slot is deducted once. MonuDesk asks you once, at the confirmed save. If the linked stone is not the one you are pulling, a choose a different stone… link opens the full inventory picker, and an order with no linked stone gets the full picker. When the order also has linked accessories to deduct, the prompt is titled Deduct stock for order #N? and has an Accessories section with its own Deduct N units button. It works the same however the order moves from the quote side onto Confirmed Order or a later stage: dragged on the board, from the order popup, or with the stage changer. A stage you added between Quote and Confirmed Order is still on the quote side, so moving an order into it takes nothing off the shelf.

Accessories come off too. When you save an order as confirmed and it carries vases, photos, urns, QR codes or vaults linked to inventory products, the Take these from your inventory? prompt lists them under Accessories, next to your stones under Stones. Deduct takes them off the shelf, confirmed by a message such as Took 2 accessories from inventory, and Don't deduct leaves your counts alone. Each accessory is deducted once per order, so confirming the same order again never takes it twice. Each vase line on an order keeps its own color, so vase stock is matched and deducted per color.

Matching is deliberately strict, so the stone you sell is the stone that leaves the yard:

• A stone with Top Shape set to Custom is never treated as stock. It is being cut fresh, so it is never named as reused and never reduces a count, even when its three dimensions happen to line up with a slab on your shelf. It can still update the price of a stock item with the same type, color, finish and exact size.

• Sizes have to match exactly, and the width has to be the width. A 24×12×4 die is not treated as your 4×12×24 stock die just because it is the same three numbers in a different order.

All of this needs Auto sync switched on. With it off, nothing is added, repriced or deducted automatically.

Pulling a stone from inventory for an order

Every stone and every base on an order can be reserved and pulled from your stock. Open the order and use its Linked from inventory panel, or pick Pull stone from inventory from the order's task badge.

• The picker lists your stock with clean names and sizes such as 4×9×9, and you can search it by name, SKU, color or size.

• Pulling takes the unit off your stock: its quantity drops by 1.

• A linked stone's row shows its SKU. Hover it to see that item's stock, price and supplier.

• A pulled stone has a Return button. It puts the unit back on hand (quantity goes up by 1) and keeps it reserved and linked to that stone.

• Unlink releases a stone that is reserved but not pulled, sending it back to available stock. A pulled stone has to be returned before it can be unlinked.

A pull, return or unlink shows on the order straight away. Orders without a stone, such as service-only or accessory-only orders, do not offer a pull. Pulling, returning and unlinking need permission to update Settings.

If you run more than one office

Everything above describes a shop with a single office. If your company runs more than one location, MonuDesk adds multi-location inventory on top of the same catalog. You keep one shared list of stones, but you can set these per office:

• Retail price

• Wholesale price

• Quantity

• Reorder point

You can also disable an item at specific offices so it never appears on their quotes.

Use the office switcher in the top header to choose which location you are viewing. Pick a specific office to see and edit that office's values, or choose All Locations to see the catalog with a varies marker wherever a price or quantity differs between offices. For the full walkthrough of per-location pricing, the All Locations view, and the per-item Locations editor, see the dedicated Inventory across multiple locations and Customize your inventory tabs articles.

Related articles:

• How to Configure the Monument Type, Color, Size and Finishes

• How the Pricing Panel Works

• Understanding the Order Board

• Marking a Purchase Order Completed and Adding the Stones to Inventory