Every product you store with Merch has a low-stock threshold. When your available stock crosses below that number, we send an alert so the right people on your team can decide whether to reorder, rebalance between warehouses, or hold off until production catches up. A second, louder alert fires when a SKU hits zero so anyone about to ship from that warehouse can pause or redirect.
The goal is the same as the rest of the platform: surface the signal that actually needs attention, and keep noise out of inboxes that cannot act on it.
#How the threshold works
Every product has a minimum inventory threshold. You set it from the product detail page in your portal. We default new products to a safe baseline so alerts work out of the box, and most teams tune the threshold after a few order cycles based on:
- How quickly the SKU moves week to week
- How long a fresh production run takes to land in your warehouse
- Whether you have a campaign or event coming up that will draw the SKU down faster than usual
A good rule of thumb: set the threshold to cover the units you would expect to ship between now and the day a reorder would arrive.
You can change the threshold any time. Lowering it makes alerts quieter; raising it gives you more lead time before a stockout.
#When the alert fires
We watch your available stock and trigger on the boundary cross, not on every order.
- Low stock fires the first time available drops under the threshold.
- Out of stock fires the moment available hits zero, even if no Low stock alert preceded it (a single bulk order can take you from healthy straight to zero).
We will not re-send the same alert until the SKU recovers above the threshold and then crosses back down. So a busy campaign that draws the SKU through the threshold once will not produce a flood of duplicate emails for the same product.
If you change the threshold itself and your current stock is already below the new value, we treat that as a fresh crossing and send a Low stock alert. That way bumping the threshold up on a quiet product cannot accidentally hide a real problem.
#Who gets notified
This is the part most teams want to tune carefully. Different people care about different SKUs, and the wrong defaults turn alerts into noise.
Account admins and account managers Every inventory alert on the account. These are the people responsible for the program overall, so they always have the full picture.
Senders Only alerts for products tied to a campaign they can access. A sender running a new-hire kit campaign sees alerts for those SKUs. The same sender does not see alerts for a SKU that lives in another team's holiday giveaway, because they cannot act on it.
If a campaign is open to everyone on the account (no specific user or team is locked to it), every sender on the account is treated as having access to its SKUs.
Your Merch account team Your account rep, order rep, and production team also get internal copies of inventory alerts so they can act on the same signal you do, often before you have to ask. These are not subject to personal preferences; they are part of the service.
#Managing alerts as an individual
Every teammate manages their own alerts. Turning your own inventory alerts off does not change anything for anyone else on the account.
To mute or unmute:
- Open Settings in the side nav of your portal.
- Choose Notifications.
- Toggle the Inventory category on or off.
Or use the master switch (Unsubscribe from all non-essential emails) when you are heading out for vacation. It pauses every optional category and restores your previous choices when you flip it back on.
You can also unsubscribe directly from the footer of any inventory alert email. That mutes only the inventory category, not the rest of your notifications.
#Across warehouses
Thresholds are set per product. We check available stock at every warehouse the product is held in, and the alert tells you which warehouse triggered it.
When the same product is stored in multiple regions, that detail matters. A low-stock event in your UK warehouse might mean you simply need to rebalance from the US warehouse, while a US-only stockout might require a fresh production run. The alert gives you enough context to make that call without opening the dashboard first.
#Tuning quick reference
- Getting too many alerts? Raise the threshold so it only fires when the SKU is genuinely close to risk, or mute the Inventory category on your personal Notifications page.
- Missing restocks? Lower the threshold (more lead time before stockout) or check that your Inventory category is on.
- Senders complaining about irrelevant pings? Confirm their campaigns are scoped to the right users or teams. If a campaign is open to the whole account, every sender on the account is in scope for its SKUs.
- Senders missing alerts they expect? Confirm the campaign they expect to see alerts for has them or their team listed as an allowed principal.
#Related
- Notifications shows the full list of categories and how the master switch works.
- Roles, teams, and permissions explains how Admin, Manager, and Sender roles map to what each teammate can see.
- Setting up spend controls covers the budgets and caps that pair naturally with inventory thresholds for predictable operations.
- Storage and inventory policy covers our storage terms and the rules around long-held inventory.