This article walks you through everything: what Stock Advice does, how the calculations work, how to configure it, the different types of advice you'll see, and how to act on them.

Stock Advice continuously analyzes your sales, your stock levels, your inbound deliveries, and your supplier lead times, then generates concrete recommendations:

You'll find Stock Advice in the seller portal under My Stock Advice, and in the fulfillment-center portal under Stock Advice.

For every product that's enabled for Stock Advice, the system calculates:

If your current position is below your target, Stock Advice generates a recommendation. If it's above, it doesn't bother you.

Stock Advice automatically calculates a weekly seasonality factor per product based on the past 12 months of sales. So if a product sells 3× faster in week 50 than in week 20, the forward-looking calculations will scale accordingly. Seasonality factors are clamped between 0.25× and 4× to prevent extreme swings, and you can override them manually per product. Find this functionality in the product settings.

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Stock Advice runs automatically in the background every few hours. You can also trigger a manual resync — see Resyncing advice manually.

Open My Stock Advice → Settings to control how Stock Advice behaves for your account.

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This is the most important setting. It tells Stock Advice how many days of stock you want to hold per channel.

Tip: If you don't sell via FBA or LVB, leave those at 0 and you won't get advice for them.
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If you use designated pick locations in your warehouse, Stock Advice can suggest moving stock from bulk storage to the pick location before it runs out.

These two toggles change how purchase-order advice is calculated:

Turning these ON is appropriate when your supplier delivers to a central location and you re-ship to channels yourself. Turning them OFF treats each channel as fully independent.
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When ON, days where a product was out of stock are excluded from the sales-per-day calculation. This gives a more realistic velocity for products that recently ran out (otherwise out-of-stock days drag the average down and you'll under-order).

Most settings can be overridden per product on the product detail page. The key ones:

Bundle products and archived products are automatically excluded from Stock Advice.

Stock Advice produces seven distinct advice types. Each one shows up on your Stock Advice page with a description, a recommended amount, and a deadline (the number of days you have left before things go wrong).
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"Order X units from supplier Y."

The system calculates your target stock position (own + included channels, with safety margin) and compares it to your available position (current stock + pending inbound deliveries). If you're short, it adds a buffer for supplier lead time, rounds up to your box size and MOQ, and recommends a purchase.

Example: You sell 10/day, your target is 30 days = 300 units, your safety margin is 20% = 360 units, your lead time is 14 days = +140 units of lead-time buffer. You currently have 200 on hand and 0 inbound. Advice: order ~300 units.
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"Move X units from location A to pick location B."

If a pick location will run out of stock within your pick trigger days (default 7), Stock Advice finds the nearest bulk storage location with stock and recommends a transfer. The amount transferred targets your pick target days (default 14).

Same-warehouse transfers are prioritized over cross-warehouse transfers.
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"Send X units to fulfillment center Z."

When stock at a ChannelDock fulfillment center is below your stock days FC target, Stock Advice recommends sending more from your own warehouse.
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"Create an FBA inbound shipment of X units."

Sends stock to Amazon FBA. Only generated when stock days FBA > 0 and the product has FBA sales. See section 7 for the full FBA logic.
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"Create an LVB inbound shipment of X units."

Sends stock to Bol.com LVB. Only generated when stock days LVB > 0 and the product has LVB sales. The advice text includes which Bol marketplace (NL/BE) it applies to.
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"Check the stock at location L."

When a pick location is within ~3 days of running out, Stock Advice asks you to physically verify the stock count. This helps catch picking errors or miscounts before they cause a stockout. The system avoids re-asking within 3 days of the last check.
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"Stock at location L expires within 14 days."

For products with expiration dates, Stock Advice flags any stock that will expire within the next 14 days so you can sell, discount, or remove it.

Stock Advice never hides its math. For any product, you can open a full step-by-step breakdown showing exactly which numbers went into the recommendation and how each step was computed.
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The purchase advice breakdown walks through 7 steps:
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Step 1 — Input Data All the raw numbers feeding the calculation:

Step 2 — Calculate Stock Targets Shows the target for each location, with the formula: days × sales/day × (1 + safety margin) Plus the iron stock floor and box-rounding step. You'll see Own, LVB, and FBA targets laid out separately, then summed into a total stock requirement.
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Step 3 — Calculate Own Warehouse Availability Sums up everything that counts toward your own warehouse position: warehouse root + stock locations + fulfillment center stock + inbound. Includes a note explaining why FC stock counts (because the FC fulfills your own-warehouse orders).
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Step 4 — Calculate Shortages and Surpluses Compares each location's target to what's available:

Step 5 — Internal Reallocation Shows how any own-warehouse surplus is proportionally allocated to cover LVB and FBA deficits before triggering a purchase from your supplier. The own-warehouse target is always protected first.
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Step 6 — Calculate Purchase Advice The final math, step by step:

Ends with the final advised quantity in bold.
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Step 7 — Timing Information

The LVB and FBA breakdowns are shorter — 4 steps:
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Step 1 — Input Data Channel (which Bol API / which Amazon region), current channel stock, inbound to channel, your own warehouse + FC stock, seasonality-adjusted sales per day, and seasonality factors.
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Step 2 — Target Calculation Stock days target for the channel × adjusted sales/day = target stock.
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Step 3 — Advice Amount Calculation Walks through: base amount → channel minimum (5 for FBA, 1 for LVB) → safety margin → box rounding → final advice.
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Step 4 — Timing and Strategy Days until the channel runs out, the replenishment time used (e.g. fixed 10 days for own-warehouse → LVB), and the deadline.
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If the modal says "Product not found or unable to generate stock advice", the product is excluded from Stock Advice (archived, bundle, or Include in stock advice is OFF), or it doesn't qualify for that advice type (e.g. requesting FBA advice on a product with no FBA sales).

Here are all the columns and terms you'll see across the Stock Advice page.

FBA and LVB advice work similarly to other advice types but with channel-specific nuances.
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Stock Advice pulls the latest FBA inventory from Amazon and adds any pending inbound deliveries (deliveries of type seller_to_amazon, fc_to_amazon, or supplier_to_amazon created within the last 15 days). Older inbound is ignored — if a delivery has been "in transit" for more than 15 days without being received, it's no longer counted, to avoid over-counting stuck shipments.

Regional logic: FBA inventory is region-aware:

Stock Advice pulls the latest LVB inventory from Bol.com and adds any pending inbound deliveries (types seller_to_bol, fc_to_bol, supplier_to_bol) created within the last 15 days.
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LVB advice is generated per Bol API (per marketplace). If you sell on both bol.com NL and bol.com BE, you may see one advice per marketplace.
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If you enable "Include FBA stock in purchasing advice":

The same logic applies for LVB when "Include LVB stock in purchasing advice" is ON.

The Stock Advice page (Seller → My Stock Advice) shows all open advice for your account.
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You can sort by Deadline, Stock in days, Sales, Stock amount, or Total stock to prioritize what to handle first. Sorting by deadline ascending is usually the most useful default — it puts the most urgent items at the top.
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Each advice row has an Action button. What it does depends on the advice type:

Once you act on an advice (or the underlying condition no longer holds after the next sync), the advice disappears from the list.

Stock Advice runs automatically every few hours. If you've just made big changes — adjusting target days, updating product settings, receiving a large inbound — and you want fresh advice immediately, you can trigger a manual resync.

The resync is queued and runs in the background. You'll be notified when it's complete. Resyncs are batched, so processing several thousand products takes a few minutes.
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Advice older than 4 weeks is automatically removed during every sync.

"I'm not seeing advice for a product I expected." Check that:

"The advised amount looks too high / too low." Review:

"I keep getting purchase advice for a product I already ordered." Check that your inbound delivery is recorded in ChannelDock and has a status that counts as pending. Deliveries marked as received or that are older than 15 days (for FBA/LVB) don't count as inbound anymore.
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"The deadline is negative — what does that mean?" A negative deadline means your stock is already below the target position. You should already have ordered. Act on it immediately.
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"FBA advice doesn't match what Amazon shows." Stock Advice uses regional minimums for EU stock. If you have 50 units in DE and 0 in FR, Stock Advice treats your EU stock as 0 (the minimum), because you can't service the FR demand from DE.

That's everything. If something still isn't clear, contact support and we'll help you tune Stock Advice to your operation.