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Related to inventory management or accounting.

Suppose I have a warehouse, and I have some goods in it. Then I need to either sell, discard or otherwise expend them.

Now I need to indicate in my books that these goods are not going to be available any more. They are leaving the warehouse.

What is this action called in English? What typical expressions or idioms convey this action?

Mari-Lou A
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Escape Velocity
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    You mean *out of stock*? : lacking a supply of, especially temporarily: We are out of stock in this item. –  Apr 27 '15 at 12:26
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    You could also simply say "[The items] are no longer stocked" or "[The items] have been removed from inventory." – Robusto Apr 27 '15 at 12:27
  • I'm interested in the verb. I need to do something so that these goods are now no longer available. I need to make them not available. I am removing them from the warehouse. I can't think of a way to say this. – Escape Velocity Apr 27 '15 at 12:31
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    Probably *destock: (COMMERCE) to reduce the amount of stock (= goods kept available to sell), or the amount of materials for making new products:* Retailers will be destocking previous versions of the product in the months before the new version is launched. –  Apr 27 '15 at 12:36
  • Hi, every so often I go through posts which have "How do you call....?" or "How is/are ______ called?" in their questions or titles. See the discussion in this post: “How do we call (something) in English?” Would you mind editing your body question to “What* is this action ....?"* Thanks! – Mari-Lou A Apr 13 '16 at 12:39
  • to fill a warehouse, to empty a warehouse and this glossary https://optimoroute.com/warehouse-terminology/ Goods are usually removed from a warehouse because they are sold. Accounting: Sold Goods – Lambie Apr 17 '22 at 15:34

7 Answers7

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If you mean to say it will no longer be available in the future (permanently), I'd use to discontinue

It expresses lack of availability, rather than the actual removal of the product from an inventory list.

discontinue
dɪskənˈtɪnjuː/
verb

cease from doing or providing (something), especially something that has been provided on a regular basis."The ferry service was discontinued by the proprietors"

stop making (a particular product)."Their current top-of-the-range running shoe is being discontinued"

Synonyms: stop, end, terminate, bring to an end, put an end to, put a stop to, wind up, finish, bring to a halt, call a halt to, cancel, drop, dispense with, do away with, get rid of, abolish;

More: suspend, interrupt, break off, phase out, withdraw; abandon, give up, cease, refrain from; informalcut, pull the plug on, axe, scrap, give something the chop, knock something on the head, leave off, pack in; informalquit;

rareintermit

"the ferry service was discontinued"

no longer available, no longer produced, no longer manufactured; obsolete, no longer in existence "a discontinued product"

antonyms: continue, new cease taking (a newspaper or periodical) or paying (a subscription).

Edit Reference added

Flater
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  • No, they are not going to be removed permanently. I mean normal warehouse operations when some goods enter the warehouse, then become out of stock, then are restocked. – Escape Velocity Apr 27 '15 at 12:35
  • Then "out of stock" is the correct phrasing (at least the one I'd use) – Flater Apr 27 '15 at 12:36
  • Slight edit: "out of stock" applies if it will be back in when available. If you e.g. decide to keep it out of the warehouse for three months regardless of when it can be restocked, I'd say "temporarily discontinued". It depends on availability being the deciding factor. – Flater Apr 27 '15 at 12:37
  • But how would I say "Get these things from the store, place them somewhere else, then record the change in availability"? – Escape Velocity Apr 27 '15 at 12:45
  • @Escape Velocity: In your example, are you speaking to people who work in the warehouse or shipping department who move the physical items, or are you speaking to software programmers who must indicate in your inventory management system that these items are no longer available? – TimR Apr 27 '15 at 12:49
  • @Tim Romano: This is indeed an inventory management system, where there is an action that would reduce the available quantity of certain stocked items. It can be because of a sale, or something else. – Escape Velocity Apr 27 '15 at 12:55
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    @Escape Velocity: so you are asking how, in the software, to reflect the fact that the items are no longer available. I would say "decrement quantity-on-hand". But if you need to reference individual items by unique serial number, then the issue is more complicated. – TimR Apr 27 '15 at 12:57
  • @EscapeVelocity: "then record the change in availability" If you're talking to the people changing the records, I'd say "update the stock in [records/application]". If said to the people physically moving the stock, I'd say to "mark it as out of stock" (or "discontinued", cfr my previous comments) – Flater Apr 27 '15 at 13:03
  • @Tim Romano: this is closer, I might use this. But I am rather looking for the action of taking the goods out of the store and also recording this action. But I can't explain this well enough. – Escape Velocity Apr 27 '15 at 13:04
  • @EscapeVelocity: They are two different actions, and have two different meanings. Escpecially if different people take these actions. For someone doing the records, they see it as a number that needs updating. For a warehouse worker, they see it as "reporting that something has gone out of stock". The way you phrase it is different in regards to the person you're talking to, as they represent different actions. To sum it up, you could say "the stock has been depleted". It implies that the last goods were taken out, and also implies that the depletion is already registered in the inventory. – Flater Apr 27 '15 at 13:07
  • @Escape Velocity: so you want a word that describes both the physical action of removing items from the shelf and the virtual action of noting in the database that the items are no longer available? The closest verb phrase is remove these items from inventory. It can apply to both physical and data contexts. – TimR Apr 27 '15 at 13:07
  • @Tim Romano: That's right. I thought there was a shorter and more idiomatic expression. – Escape Velocity Apr 27 '15 at 13:09
  • "Remove from inventory" is idiomatic, and clear. It has the virtue of being a term of trade and yet not abstruse jargon. – TimR Apr 27 '15 at 13:10
  • Flater: Yes, it is about updating/recording the change and I also wanted to reflect the fact that the items officially leave the warehouse. There might be even signing of papers. Maybe I was looking for something that doesn't exist. – Escape Velocity Apr 27 '15 at 13:21
  • It's a very compounded statement. You can split it into two different sentences, where you e.g. say "It has been taken out of stock. The products are already removed, and the inventory has been updated accordingly". That allows you to use more clear definitions instead of assuming the reader understands what your compounded statement implies (as they'd need to understand what your company's process is) – Flater Apr 27 '15 at 13:33
  • Flater please see the network referencing requirement and add a link to Oxford Dictionaries Online where your quote comes from. – Andrew Leach Apr 27 '15 at 22:38
  • Depending on the context, stock is reduced by 1. issuing ( e.g. to Manufacturing department ). 2. dispatching ( to another warehouse or customer ). 3 returning ( in case of rejection ). – Wishwas May 10 '16 at 17:25
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I think you're talking about "picking" stock. I can't find a good reference for this sense of the verb "to pick" yet, but will keep looking.

Where I work, if stock has been "picked" for one order, it is no longer available for another order, even though it is still sitting on the shelf. It is not necessarily a physical movement of stock, but a matter of allocating stock to an order.

If an order is cancelled, the stock is then "unpicked" and is now available again.

Phil M Jones
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    In the warehouse I work for, goods still on the shelf are allocated to an order, then they're picked, and when the goods have left the building [or, at least, are on a pallet waiting to go out], they're marked despatched. – David Garner Apr 28 '15 at 08:30
  • The people that actually work in the warehouse here may use those terms too, as far as I know. My answer was based on eaves-dropping the Sales Order Processing team who sit near me. They 'pick' stock from suitable batches to fulfil the orders, and 'unpick' them on a distressingly regular basis when they're reminded to look at the batch numbers and dates first :-) – Phil M Jones Apr 28 '15 at 08:33
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How about de-inventory?

inventory

: to keep an available supply of (merchandise); stock.

Random House

Spiceworks keeps de-inventorying computers

Spiceworks

Community
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Elian
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Despatched. That's the word you're looking for:

send away towards a designated goal — Vocabulary.com

Laurel
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Esmeralda
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    @Lambie Both spellings are acceptable. The "e" one seems to be British. – Laurel Apr 17 '22 at 15:43
  • https://www.ukstandards.org.uk/PublishedNos-old/SFLWS33.pdf I guess with a de, it's out of date or not much used. – Lambie Apr 17 '22 at 15:47
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You are liquidating your warehouse. It is intrinsic that items will no longer be available from said warehouse and any that were have been redistributed.

In United Kingdom law and business, liquidation is the process by which a company (or part of a company) is brought to an end, and the assets and property of the company are redistributed. –Wiki

Everything must go! Liquidation sale!

Mazura
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Accounting Terminology for goods:

When an inventory item is sold, the item's cost is removed from inventory and the cost is reported on the company's income statement as the cost of goods sold. Cost of goods sold is likely the largest expense reported on the income statement. When the cost of goods sold is subtracted from sales, the remainder is the company's gross profit.

inventory accounting

Otherwise, the goods are simply removed from the warehouse but generally one would hope there had been a sale of said goods.

Lambie
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I need to either sell, discard or otherwise expend them. Now I need to indicate in my books that these goods are not going to be available any more. They are leaving the warehouse.

"These goods have been disposed of."

OED To dispose of

8.b. To put or get (anything) off one's hands; to put away, stow away, put into a settled state or position; to deal with (a thing) definitely; to get rid of; ...

1885 Law Rep.: Queen's Bench Div. 14 879 The observations made by the Master of the Rolls sufficiently dispose of that contention.

1920 Opinions of the Attorney General of Ohio - Volume 1 - Page 198 That is , you speak of the partnership as still existing and presumably still doing business after having disposed of the stock of goods .

Greybeard
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