# Inventory

### Philosophy

Our system takes a unique view to keeping track of your physical inventory. While other systems will add and remove items to inventory based on their physical availability, ION keeps the items as "inventory" and manages if they are available/installed/in progress via a status. This allows ultimate search-ability of parts. I.e. if you want to find where that specific serial number is.

With this approach, we encourage the creation of inventory as early as possible in the process. For instance, when creating a purchase line for a part, inventory is instantly created and put in an "On order" status. This allows you to pass serial information to the supplier if desired or create issue tickets against the serial number.

### Add inventory

![](/files/lTolcjijSkyRvUWxM3t9)

Use the "New Inventory" button in the top right of inventory to add inventory items. You can add attributes to each inventory item, including lot number, serial number, location, quantity, usage type, cost, and supplier.

Use the "New Part" button to create a new part in your part library.

Use the "Export to CSV" button to export your inventory lines to a CSV file.

### Lot number, serial number, and quantity

Inventory items can have lot numbers, serial numbers, and quantities set. Any inventory item that has serial number cannot have a quantity greater than 1. Serialized parts can have lot numbers, but lot-tracked inventory items need not have a serial number.

ION allows multiple inventory items, with different locations and different tracking attributes (e.g. lot, serial) even amongst the same part number.

### Locations

ION keeps track of your locations, so you can use the autocomplete to fill in which inventory location an inventory item or items are. You can manage already-created locations in the "Factory" section of ION.

### Suppliers

Suppliers work similar to locations. You can use the autocomplete to use an existing supplier or create a new supplier right within the inventory manager.


---

# Agent Instructions: Querying This Documentation

If you need additional information that is not directly available in this page, you can query the documentation dynamically by asking a question.

Perform an HTTP GET request on the current page URL with the `ask` query parameter:

```
GET https://manual.firstresonance.io/features/parts-and-trace/inventory.md?ask=<question>
```

The question should be specific, self-contained, and written in natural language.
The response will contain a direct answer to the question and relevant excerpts and sources from the documentation.

Use this mechanism when the answer is not explicitly present in the current page, you need clarification or additional context, or you want to retrieve related documentation sections.