The daily stock-alert email: set minimums first

OpenBoxes Lift can send you one email a day listing the products that are below their minimum and the lots that are close to expiring. It is the easiest way to stop relying on someone remembering to check. But the below-minimum half can only report on products that have a minimum level set, so an instance with few minimums gets a short, reassuring email that is quietly incomplete. This article explains why minimums come first, which ones to set, how to turn the email on, and what to expect from it.

Why minimums come first#

The email's below-minimum section compares each product's quantity on hand at a location with the minimum level set for it there in OpenBoxes. Three rules follow:

• A product with no minimum at a location is never reported as low there, however low it gets, even at zero.
• The minimum is the only threshold used. The reorder quantity and the maximum are not read.
• If you set no minimums at all, nothing will ever be reported as low.

The expiring section works differently: it looks only at expiry dates, so it runs whether or not you have set minimums.

To make the gap visible, every email carries a coverage line, for example: "We only check products that have a minimum level set: 142 of 3,180 products here." The Stock alerts panel in the portal has the same figure on its card Products with a minimum level. If the first number is small, the email is watching a small part of your stock.

Which minimums to set first#

You do not need a minimum on every product before you start. Begin where a stock-out costs the most:

1. Products where running out harms someone: essential medicines, test kits, anything a clinic cannot do without.
2. Fast movers, which go from comfortable to empty quickly.
3. Products with long or unreliable lead times, where a late order cannot be fixed quickly.

Then add the rest in batches, and watch the coverage line grow.

Minimums are set per product and per location in OpenBoxes, on the product's edit page, in its Inventory Levels tab. Setting min and max levels shows how to work out the numbers from consumption and lead time.

Buffer or order signal?#

Decide what you want the email to mean. If a product's minimum is its safety stock, a line in the email means you are already into your buffer: act today. If you set the minimum at the level where you would reorder, the email tells you when to order. Either works, as long as your team knows which one you chose.

Turning it on#

1. In the portal, go to Integrations, then the Destinations tab.
2. Open Stock alerts and switch them on.
3. Tick the teammates who should receive the email. The account owner is included by default.
4. Choose the expiring soon window: 30, 60, 90, 180 or 365 days. The default is 30.

Anyone on your account can change these settings, including switching the alerts off for everyone. It is a shared team setting, not an owner-only one. The email is included on your plan, on Shared and Dedicated instances, with nothing to buy.

The account owner can also add up to five addresses outside the account, such as a supplier or a colleague without a login. Each has to confirm a 6-digit code before anything is sent to it. See Stock alerts for the details.

What to expect#

• Once a day, shortly after 7am in your instance's timezone. We take one picture of your stock early in the morning and send from it. It is never real time. The timezone is the one set under Settings, General in the portal (US Eastern if none is set), and the email names it.
• Below minimum, grouped by location, largest shortfall first, including products at zero. Expiring, grouped by location, soonest first, with lot number, expiry date and quantity. Lots already past their date are not listed.
• Long lists are cut, never hidden. At most 50 rows per location in each section and 200 in one email, and a cut section always states its real total, for example "Showing 50 of 1,483 products below minimum."
• No email on a day when nothing is wrong. The Stock alerts panel shows when the last check ran and how many alerts it found, so you can tell "we looked and you are fine" from "we did not look". A check that could not be completed is reported as such, never as 0 alerts.
• Unsubscribing affects one address only. Every email has an unsubscribe link that removes only the address it was sent to; the rest of the team keeps receiving it.

The weekly summary#

There is also a weekly summary: a Monday email about the week before, sent from 7am in the same timezone. Unlike the daily email, it is sent even in a week when nothing went wrong, because it reports counts and totals: stock-outs, products below minimum, expiring lots, stock value at the start and end of the week, open purchase orders and activity. Stock and order values are shown to the account owner and admins, and to other teammates only if the account owner turns that on.

It is opt-in twice: someone switches it on for the account in the Stock alerts panel, and then it is turned on per person: each person ticks their own row, and the account owner can also tick teammates and outside addresses. Only people on the daily email's list can receive it. In a week with fewer daily checks, such as your first, it says how many it is based on, for example "Based on 6 of 7 daily checks." See the weekly summary.

Summary#

• The below-minimum half of the email only sees products with a minimum set; the coverage line tells you how many that is.
• Set minimums first for the products where a stock-out does the most harm, then work through the rest.
• Turn the email on under Integrations, Destinations, Stock alerts, and tick who receives it.
• It arrives once a day, shortly after 7am, and not at all when nothing is wrong; the panel shows that the check ran.

The short video A Tour of Your Portal shows where things live in the portal, and Email, Slack, Teams or PagerDuty covers the other places alerts can go. Every destination is listed on Integrations.