The questions that come up when you run a fashion warehouse, each answered directly at the top with the detail underneath.
To run a stocktake with a barcode scanner you scan the EAN on every garment on the shelf, the software increments the count for that variant, and at the end it compares counted against recorded stock. Differences are listed per variant so you can recount before anything is written to stock.
Size and color variants are managed by giving every combination its own identity: the EAN, the stock figure and the cost live at variant level, not at style level. A garment in 4 colors and 6 sizes produces 24 records to buy, count, price and sell, and style-level tracking loses that detail.
To receive a delivery note into stock you compare it against the purchase order, check what physically arrived, and record the lines by size and color with quantities and costs. Differences against the order are recorded as short or over delivery, and only the quantities actually received should update inventory.
A B2B price list in fashion is the set of wholesale prices a brand charges retailers. It starts from product cost, applies a markup, and usually states a recommended retail price too. The same brand runs several lists at once, by season, channel and customer, so one product can carry more than one valid price.
With cash on delivery the carrier collects the order value from the customer at the door and pays it back to the shop, usually within 7 to 20 days and for a surcharge of 3 to 6 euros per parcel. The amount to collect is declared when the label is bought and printed on it.
Stock on hand is the quantity in your warehouse at a given moment. Turnover measures how many times that stock is replaced over a period: units sold divided by average stock on hand. Eight hundred sold against an average of two hundred held is a turnover of four.
Sell-in is the stock a retailer buys from a supplier. Sell-out is what the end customer buys. The gap shows how much stock is still sitting in the business: buy 100 garments, sell 60, and sell-through is 60% with 40 units of capital on the shelf. It only becomes useful read variant by variant.
A packing list states what is inside each carton of a shipment: which box holds which items, in which size, color and quantity. It lets you check goods in carton by carton without opening everything, and it is the document that proves a shortage to the supplier before the invoice is paid.
A size curve is how quantities are split across the sizes of one style, for example 1-2-2-1 across S, M, L and XL. Suppliers use curves to build prepacks, buyers to order in proportion to how their customers buy. Sell-through read size by size tells you whether next season the curve should shift.
An in-season reorder is a repeat order placed while the season is running, on the styles selling best, to stop the sizes that matter going out of stock. You place one when a variant passes the sell-through you expected, the supplier still has stock, and full-price weeks remain after the lead time.
A delivery note travels with the goods and describes what was sent: items, quantities, cartons. The invoice is the accounting document and says what you owe, with prices, tax and terms. They often disagree, because what was ordered, what arrived and what was billed are three separate facts. Goods-in is where you reconcile them.
An EAN is the globally unique barcode issued through GS1 and assigned to a single product variant, so every retailer reads the same digits. An SKU is an internal code each company invents for itself. A fashion style produces many size and color variants: each carries its own EAN, while the SKU follows whoever created it.