Confused about inventory states and negative #s displaying

[tedvmg]

I'm confused about how the math for inventory states works: "available, on-hand, and committed".

We are in manufacturing and typically do things "made to order", so we don't keep a lot in stock or "available"

But I don't understand the math behind the three columns.

Here's an example: In the top row of the image, we have 5 orders for a product (quantity of each order is 1), which is not in stock. So we'll manufacture 5 of the product to ship for these orders. Yet the "Available" is at -9 and on-hand is at -4. 

Shouldn't "available" and "on-hand" be zero?

Why are they negative? And if they do display negative, because we have 5 orders shouldn't it be -5 not -9 or -4?

Maybe I'm missing something simple, but it has me confused...

[BBBBBruce]

I'm not sure if this applies to your situation, but let me share what I have exprienced.

Shopify continues to track inventory even if you have unchecked the "Track Inventory" property for a product.

You will see this when you add a chech to the "Track Inventory" property and look at the inventory adjustment history.  So even if you set a product to "not track inventory", such as a service or a made-to-order product, the total inventory keeps going down (larger negative value) with each order.  You will see this in your Monthend Inventory Value report.  The way Shopify tracks inventory data is fraught with errors.  I really wish they took this seriously.

The following was my experience:

https://community.shopify.com/c/shopify-discussions/inventory-value-and-inventory-snapshot-reports-a...