"Stuck" reserve: how temporary storage warehouses work and how to return goods to sale

Business owners often encounter a situation where goods are physically on a shop shelf but cannot be sold through the software because they are reserved or have been moved to a temporary storage warehouse (a level 3 warehouse).

This mode is specifically designed to set goods aside for a particular customer order and prevent their accidental sale to another customer on the shop floor.

However, the most common issue reported to technical support is a stuck reservation: the customer's payment deadline has long passed, but the goods do not return to available stock on their own. Alternatively, after partial fulfilment of an invoice, some items remain lost between warehouses and prevent accurate record keeping.

What is a temporary storage warehouse (a level 3 warehouse)?

When you create a customer order and reserve goods for it, Торгсофт offers two workflows: leave the goods in the main warehouse and simply block their sale, or physically move them to a temporary storage warehouse.

In Торгсофт, this warehouse is created automatically as a level 3 warehouse. Goods placed there are removed from the main shop's normal stock circulation. For example, during a standard inventory count of the main warehouse, these reserved goods are not included, because the system treats them as stored separately and waiting for their customer.

Why reservations get stuck: common causes and mistakes

Most reservation problems arise not from software failures but from misunderstanding how the software works and staff carrying out actions in the wrong order.

1. The myth of automatic reservation release. The most common mistake is expecting goods to become available for sale automatically when the reservation period ends. In Торгсофт, a reservation is not released automatically, even after it expires. The software only indicates the expiry visually by highlighting the goods with a background colour on the «Резерв» (Reservation) tab. To make the goods available for sale again, you must perform the action manually.

2. Changing the quantity after reserving goods. A cashier may reserve 1 unit, then the customer asks for another. The cashier changes the quantity on the invoice to 2 and clicks «Зарезервувати» (Reserve) again. When an outgoing delivery note is subsequently created to dispatch the goods, the algorithm could read the total quantity incorrectly, causing the goods to remain stuck in the reservation.

3. Breaking the order handover workflow. If staff begin handing over an order through «Замовлення клієнта на виріб» (Customer Order for a Product) but issue the remaining goods through the regular «Реалізацію» (Sales) mode, an error occurs. Breaking this workflow leaves the goods stuck in the level 3 temporary storage warehouse as not handed over.

4. Waiting list problems. During a partial reservation, when some goods are not yet physically in stock, the goods receive the status Awaiting Reservation. If the reservation is subsequently released, the goods could mistakenly remain on the waiting list, creating confusion in the documents.

How to make goods available for sale again manually (releasing a reservation)

If a customer cancels an order or the reservation period expires, the goods must be returned to the main warehouse manually.

The correct sequence of actions:

1. Open «Документ» — «Торгівля з випискою рахунка» (Document - Sales with Invoice Issuance) or the mode in which the order was created.

2. Find the affected invoice and open the «Резерв» (Reservation) tab.

3. Select the goods you want to make available for sale again and click «Зняти товар з резерву» (Release Goods from Reservation).

4. If the goods were partially awaiting reservation, use the new «Скасувати очікування резервування» (Cancel Waiting for Reservation) button (available for goods awaiting reservation on the Invoice tab) to clear the list and restore correct stock levels.

After these actions, Торгсофт automatically generates an internal transfer that returns the goods from the level 3 warehouse to your main inventory accounting centre.

Critical errors and unusual situations

Sometimes the standard buttons do not help because the reservation is blocked at database level:

• FOREIGN KEY error (key conflict). When releasing several different goods from reservation on a single invoice, a technical SQL Server error could occur, such as an fk_M4L5 conflict, which blocked the action entirely. This is a technical bug in older software versions. If you encounter it, the recommendation is to release goods one at a time or update Торгсофт to the current version, in which the partial dispatch and reservation release algorithms were rewritten and corrected.

• Database corruption or restoration from a backup. If you restored the database after a failure, for example by rolling it back a few days, the links between invoices and the reservation warehouse may be broken. The goods are recorded in the level 3 warehouse, but the reservation document no longer exists. In this case, the standard «Зняти з резерву» (Release from Reservation) button returns an error. To resolve this problem, contact technical support: specialists use SQL queries to manually set the quantities in the stuck transfer documents to zero and delete the broken documents.

• Problems during stocktaking. If you notice that the inventory count sheet shows incorrect stock levels, check whether the goods are stuck in the temporary storage warehouse. To include these goods in the inventory count, explicitly enable the «Враховувати кількість товару на складах 3 рівня» (Include Goods Quantities in Level Three Warehouses) option in the inventory count sheet settings.