Stock refers to the basic information on items contained within a store (or group of stores in the same company). Think of stock as a subset of parts. Every item in stock must be a part, but not every part must be in stock. Stock is a list of items held; a parts list is your list of items available for purchase from outside sources or items that you generally do not stock.
You can associate stores with parts and enter automatic reorder information for parts. Consider how the stock item is reordered. The inventory unit of measure may be 'each' but the purchasing unit of measure may be based on item, case, or gross. If the maximum level is 20 and your minimum level is 10, but you reorder the item by the case (with 24 items per case), you need to adjust levels.
Consider the vendor lead time. Some stock items may be reordered every 60 days and others may be reordered every 30 days. You may want to order a higher quantity of items for those 60-day periods. Also, some items take longer to procure and you may have to increase reorder amounts to have enough on hand.
Specify the stock replenishment method for the part. You can set the stock method to Min/Max, Reorder Level, or On-Demand.
If you are using LIFO/FIFO as your pricing method for stock, the system records the unit price of each receipt transaction for stock so that each subsequent inventory transaction is recorded at the appropriate unit price.