1. Purpose
Find and recover stock that is sitting in a picking tote instead of on a shelf, so it can be picked and sold again.
2. Scope
Stock left behind in a tote after a pick round. Correcting a count that is genuinely wrong belongs in a cycle count, and relocating stock between ordinary locations is SWI-002.
3. Roles & Responsibilities
Role | Responsibility |
|---|---|
Operations lead | Identifies stranded totes and runs the recovery |
Warehouse operator | Physically confirms what is in the tote before anything is recorded |
Account manager | Explains to the brand why On Hand and the shelves disagreed |
4. When you need this
Any of these:
A SKU shows units On Hand, but every bin you look at reads 0.
Orders will not allocate even though the screen says you have stock.
A tote still holds units days or weeks after its pick round shipped.
A brand asks why their storefront shows out of stock when the system says otherwise.
5. Key concept — On Hand counts totes, picking does not
This is the whole misunderstanding, and it is worth stating plainly.
What you see | What is actually true |
|---|---|
On Hand says 2 | Correct. On Hand counts every tracked location, including totes and carts. |
Every bin says 0 | Also correct. The units are in totes, not on shelves. |
Nothing will allocate | Expected. Totes are not pickable, so a picker can never be sent to one. |
Stock in a tote is real, counted, and completely unusable until you take it out. That is why the two numbers can disagree without either being wrong.
Units end up stranded when a pick round takes more to the tote than it ships, and the remainder is never put back. A tote holding stock more than a day or two after its round finished is almost always a strand.
6. Procedure — find the stranded stock
Go to Inventory and open the By SKU tab.
Search the SKU and expand its row to reveal the location list.
Turn Hide Empty on. A product can have hundreds of location records and nearly all of them read 0, so with the toggle off you are scrolling past the answer. With it on you are left with only the locations actually holding units.
Read the location type beside each name. Anything typed tote is your stranded stock.
7. Procedure — recover it
Physically check the tote first. Everything below records what you tell it, so count what is in front of you before you start.
Go to Inventory and switch to the By Location tab.
Search the tote name, for example C3T23, and expand its row.
Click Empty Tote. The button appears on tote rows only.
Choose Smart Return, not Delete All Inventory. Smart Return decides what to do line by line and previews it before you commit, in three groups:
Preview group | What it means |
|---|---|
Will be returned to shelf | Goes back to the location it was picked from. This is the outcome you want. |
Will be unpicked | Attached to an order that has not shipped. The pick is undone so the order can be picked again properly. |
Will be deleted | Attached to an order that already shipped, so the units left the building. Removing them corrects a count that is overstated. |
Read the preview against what you physically counted. If they disagree, stop and reconcile first.
Confirm.
If some units cannot be traced back to where they came from, you are asked for a Fallback Location. Choose a real, pickable location you can physically put them in, not a holding area.
To clear several at once, tick the tote rows in the By Location list and use the bulk Empty Tote action. You can select up to 500 totes in one go, and the selection has to be totes only, so the button switches off if an ordinary location is ticked.
8. Verification
The tote no longer appears when you filter the SKU's locations with Hide Empty on.
The units show at a pickable location instead, and Allocatable for the SKU has risen by the same amount.
Orders that were waiting on the SKU begin to allocate on the next pass.
The location's inventory log, reached from the list icon on the row, shows the transaction.
9. Constraints and caveats
Count before you click. Smart Return trusts the record. If the record says 1 and the tote is empty, you will put a unit back on the shelf that does not exist.
Delete All Inventory cannot be undone. It writes the units off rather than returning them. Only use it when you have confirmed the tote is genuinely empty and the record is wrong.
If the tote reads 0 already, the dialog says This tote is empty and there is nothing to recover. That is a different problem: someone adjusted the tote to zero while an order was still holding stock in it, which can leave the order stuck on a pick round. Send the order number and tote name to Ship Side Kick support.
Totes are never pickable, so recovering the stock is the only way to make it sellable. Recalculate will not help, because the figures are already correct.
10. Worked example
A brand reported 2 units On Hand with every bin reading 0, and 26 orders unable to allocate.
Observation | Reading |
|---|---|
On Hand 2, every bin 0 | Both true. The units were in two totes. |
Location list showed 379 entries | 377 read 0. Hide Empty reduced it to the 2 that mattered. |
C3T23 held 1, untouched since 13 July | 13 units went in for that round, 12 shipped, 1 abandoned. |
C18T13 held 1, untouched since 29 July | Same shape, a later round. |
Available −27, Backorder 27 | The SKU was genuinely short as well. Recovery helped, but did not fill the backorder. |
Two rounds of Empty Tote and Smart Return returned both units to pickable shelves. The lesson the brand took away was the Hide Empty toggle, which is what turned a support ticket into a thirty second check.
11. Records
Inventory log per location, from the list icon on the location row.
Any fallback location chosen during recovery.
12. References
SWI-002 — Move Inventory Between Locations
SWI-004 — Read the Inventory Screen
SWI-001 — Set Up Warehouse Storage Locations