Available to Sell (ATS)

Available to sell (ATS) is the inventory a brand can still commit to new orders — on-hand stock plus confirmed incoming receipts, less whatever is already allocated, reserved or sold. It is a position at a date rather than a single number: the ATS for a given ship date counts only the receipts that land before it and the commitments that ship before it, and dropping the date is what produces an oversell.

ATS is arithmetic on four inputs, and the date is the fifth. Take an illustrative style-color holding 400 units on hand with 600 more on a purchase order landing in week six, against 350 units committed to ship now and 500 committed to ship in week eight. Netted flat, the figures read 1,000 less 850, or 150 available. Netted by date they read differently: today’s ATS is 400 − 350 = 50, because the 600 have not landed; week eight’s is 400 + 600 − 350 − 500 = 150. A rush order for 100 units today sits comfortably inside the flat number and 50 units past the dated one, and an order-entry screen that nets without a date shows the flat number.

Each input has a way of being wrong that still produces a confident number. On-order is a vendor’s promise treated as a fact: a short-ship, a QC hold or a slipped sail date moves a receipt after orders have been written against it. Allocated-but-unshipped units age quietly, so a cancelled or abandoned commitment keeps holding stock that could have been sold to someone else. Returns in transit are counted twice or not at all depending on when the credit lands. And a style-level ATS conceals the size dimension entirely: 150 units available at style level can be 150 units of the two sizes nobody is asking for, which is an oversell in every practical sense even though the arithmetic is right.

The two error directions cost real money and only one of them complains. An understated ATS is silent — sellable stock sits unsold, and nothing in any system reports the order that was never written. An overstated ATS is loud: oversells, short-shipped orders, cancellations, chargebacks, and a wholesale account that stops believing the order confirmation. Because only the loud failure generates a complaint, ATS discipline drifts conservative over time, which is the expensive direction to drift. Reading ATS against the receipt plan — what is landing, when, and how much of it is already spoken for — is what keeps it honest, and it is the unit-level twin of what open-to-buy does in dollars.

Apparel ATS nets at style-colour-size against a wholesale order’s start and cancel dates, so units held for an order that passes its cancel date come back to the pool on a date rather than on a decision. Footwear ATS is pairs by size, and a style-level figure is close to meaningless once a run is broken. Accessories and bags carry no size dimension, so the netting is colorway-level and cleaner — but a hardware or trim shortage moves a whole colorway’s receipt date in one step. In outdoor and sporting goods, dealer prebooks consume ATS months before a receipt lands, so the at-once pool is what is genuinely available. Home and furniture ATS is governed by container ETA, and a port delay moves the available date for hundreds of orders at once. In health and beauty, shelf life and PAO make dated stock unsellable while it is still physically on hand, so an expiry screen belongs inside the netting rather than beside it. Toys and games hold stock that cannot ship until safety certification clears, and licensed product stops being sellable at the end of its sell-off period regardless of what is on hand. Baby and juvenile hard goods are high cube, and where they cross-dock or ship direct from the vendor, what is available tracks the vendor’s position rather than the brand’s own on-hand. In jewelry and watches, memo and consignment pieces sit on a floor without being owned, and counting them as available commits stock the business cannot ship.