# Introduction - Stock Transfers

A transfer moves stock between your own depots. Nothing is sold, nothing is bought, and your total does not change.

**Video coming soon:** Moving stock between depots, and the in-transit state between sending and receiving.

It is the one stock document with no customer and no vendor on the other side of it, which is what makes it easy to get wrong: there is nobody external to notice a mistake.

![The Stock Transfers screen, subtitled Manage and track inventory transfers between warehouses, and its Transfer Order action. Columns read Date, Transfer Order number, Source Warehouse, Destination Warehouse, Reason, Status and Total Qty. Every transfer leaves Rotherham Central Warehouse for Sheffield Depot, Birmingham Trade Counter, Glasgow Depot or Bristol Distribution Centre, with reasons such as depot top-up, rebalancing stock, overflow racking and consolidating slow movers, and statuses of Draft, In Transit or Received.](https://www.sorviai.com/help/inventory/stock-transfers/transfers-list.png)

*Source, destination and a reason on every row. The status column is the one that matters day to day.*

## What it does to your numbers

| Figure | Effect of a transfer |
| --- | --- |
| Total stock on hand | Unchanged |
| Stock at the source depot | Down by the quantity sent |
| Stock at the destination | Up by the quantity received |
| Stock value | Unchanged. Nothing was bought or sold |
| Revenue and cost of goods | Untouched |

Because the total does not move, a transfer never shows up in a profit figure. It shows up in availability, which is the number that decides whether you can promise a delivery.

## Three states, and the one in the middle

1. **Draft**: Nothing has moved
2. **In Transit**: Left the source
3. **Received**: Landed at the destination

Between the last two the stock is in transit: gone from where it was, not yet where it is going. That state is real and it is worth watching, because stock in transit is stock nobody can sell.

![A transfer order record naming its source and destination warehouses, its reason, its status and the items and quantities being moved, with an activity panel at the right.](https://www.sorviai.com/help/inventory/stock-transfers/transfer-detail.png)

*The reason field is free text and is the only thing that will explain the movement a year later.*

> **Warning:**
>
> **In transit is not lost, but it looks the same on a shelf**
>
> A transfer sent and never received leaves units in limbo indefinitely. Receiving is a separate step because vans take time, not because it is optional, so a transfer older than the journey is a prompt to go and look.

> **Tip:**
>
> **Use a transfer, not two adjustments**
>
> Adjusting one depot down and another up produces the same totals and destroys the reason. A transfer is one document saying the stock moved; two adjustments are two write-offs nobody can explain at year end.