If you manage rental inventory, you may sometimes see an alert on your dashboard or when looking at a rental that says you have Invalid product availability. This alert means that based on your balance of rental delivery and pick-up jobs, that you may not have enough inventory available for a job. This alerts is a head's up so you don't overbook your inventory.

Before You Start

Here are some things to know about the invalid product availability alerts:

• If you do not use inventory or rentals, you will not see the invalid product availability alert in your account
• You will need Admin or Owner level permission to edit inventory settings
• You will need Manager, Admin or Owner level permission to view inventory settings
• Invalid Product Availability alerts can appear for past, current or upcoming rental jobs

How Product Availability is Calculated

Job "Weights"

For each single day on the schedule, product availability is calculated based on the order the jobs appear from top-to-bottom. What this means is: 

• Behind the scenes in the schedule, each job is given a "weight" which puts the jobs in an ordered list from top-to-bottom (the order in which the jobs will be performed for that day)
  • For example, if you look at any single day and single technician on the schedule, the job at the top is job #1, the job below that is job #2, the job below that is job #3, and so on...
• That "weight" is not visible to you as the end user
• The "weight" of the job affects the invalid product availability calculations that happen behind the scenes and determine whether or not the invalid product availability alert appears

Examples

If rental jobs for a single day are arranged in this top-to-bottom order, this can cause the invalid product availability alert to appear:

1. Pick-up of 11 Yarder
2. Pick-up of 11 Yarder
3. Delivery of 11 Yarder
4. Delivery of 11 Yarder

If rental jobs for a single day are arreanged in this order, you should not see the invalid product availability alert appear:

1. Delivery of 11 Yarder
2. Pick-up of 11 Yarder
3. Delivery of 11 Yarder
4. Pick-up of 11 Yarder

Validation Logic

Behind the scenes, the product validation logic checks for two things:

1. Are you attempting to pick up more units than were delivered?
2. Are you attempting to deliver more units than are available on that date?

The product-validation request then finds the oldest job with invalid availability according to the two checks above, and returns the matching job that caused the imbalance in available inventory.

Examples

• If you have a rental where you deliver "1" inventory item and a then pick-up "1" unit inventory item, your inventory will be balanced and you will not see an alert
• If you cancel a delivery job, that can cause the alert to appear
• If you have a rental with only a pick-up job, the inventory logic sees a delivery of "0" and a pick-up of "1" so the inventory is "-1", and you will see an alert
• You have a delivery job scheduled for January 2 for "1" inventory item. Plans change and you deliver that unit ahead of schedule on January 1. If you don't change the scheduled date to January 1 to match the job completion date of January 1, the logic behind the scenes sees that item should not be available to rent until January 2, so you will see an alert.

How to Dismiss an Invalid Product Availability Alert

Complete the Delivery Job

If the alert that appears is for a pick-up job, make sure the delivery job for that rental was marked as done (completed). Here's how to do that:

1. Look at the Invalid product availability alert on your ServiceCore dashboard or across the bottom of your screen
2. Look for the job number that is listed in the alert
3. Click the Job Number
4. On the job details page, click the Actions button
5. Click Complete Job from the list of options that appear
   
6. In the lightbox that appears, for the Job completion date make sure to choose a date that on or before the date of the pick-up job for that same inventory item that appears in the Invalid Product Availability alert
7. Select the serial number(s) in the Select which items were managed in this job for the inventory items delivered for that rental (if applicable)
8. Finish filling out the rest of the form
9. Once you're finished, click Mark as Done

If the Invalid product availability alert still appears, try the steps in the next section.

Add a New Delivery Job if the Original Delivery Job was Canceled

Things happen! We get that. Sometimes delivery jobs get canceled. When a delivery is canceled, you might see the Invalid Product Availability alert appear. To add a new delivery job to a rental, and make the alert go away, follow these steps: Add Jobs to a Rental.

If this doesn't work, try the steps in the next section.

Change the Job Scheduled Date

If the alert that appears is for a job that was completed in the past, you can make the invalid product availability alert go away by trying these steps:

1. Look at the Invalid product availability alert on your ServiceCore dashboard
2. Look for the job number that is listed in the alert
3. Click the Job Number
   
4. On the job details page, look to see if the job completion date is before the date the job was scheduled
   
5. If yes, click the Actions button
6. Click on Edit from the list of options that appear
7. Click on Edit Job from the sub-menu that appears
   
8. Look at the Schedule section
9. Change the Day of date to the same date the job was completed
   
10. Once you've changed the date, ccroll to the bottom of the screen and click Save

If the Invalid product availability alert still appears for that job, try the steps in the next section.

Change the Top-to-Bottom Order of Jobs

If you are seeing the invalid product availability alert, especially for dates in the past, change the top-to-bottom order of jobs to balance your inventory ratio of 1-to-1 for delivery-to-pickup.

For example, if your jobs are ordered like this:

1. Pick-up
2. Pick-up
3. Delivery
4. Delivery

Change the order from top-to-bottom to this:

1. Delivery
2. Pick-up
3. Delivery
4. Pick-up

To change the order of jobs for a single day, follow these steps:

1. Look at the Invalid product availability alert on your ServiceCore dashboard
2. Look for the job number that is listed in the alert
3. Click the Job Number
   
4. On the job details page, click on Actions
5. Click on View from the list of options that appear
6. Click on View Job on Schedule
   
7. You will be re-directed to the schedule and will see the job highlighted with a yellow star
   
8. Hover over the job until the job details appear
9. Press and hold on the 6 dots
   
10. Drag the job higher or lower in the day
11. Release (drop) the job once it's in a new location
    

Once your jobs are in the correct order to balance your inventory, the invalid product availability alert across the bottom of the screen will go away.

Will Cause an Alert		Will Not Cause an Alert

Add A Delivery Job to The Rental

If the job causing the alert is a completed pick-up job, and you have tried the steps above, you may need to add a delivery job to balance out your inventory. To do this, follow these steps:

1. Look at the Invalid product availability alert on your ServiceCore dashboard
2. Click on View Rental
   
3. On the rental details page, go to the Jobs section
4. Click (+) Add Job
5. For Select Job Type choose Delivery
6. For the Day of choose a date that is on or before the completed pick-up job date
7. In the Inventory to Deliver section choose the same item that appers in the Invalid product availability alert
8. Click Done
9. On the Delivery Job page that appears, click Actions
10. Click Complete Job from the list of options that appear
11. In the lightbox that appears, for Job Completion Date, choose a date that is on or before the completed pick-up job date
12. Click Mark as Done at the bottom

If that doesn't work, try the steps in the next section.

Reactivate Inventory

You may see the Invalid product availability alert if you have active rentals or rentals in the past that use deactivated inventory. Check out this article to reactivate inventory: Deactivate and Reactivate Itemized Inventory.

FAQs

Here are a few frequently asked questions we receive about the invalid product availability alert:

Why am I seeing the invalid product availability flag for jobs completed in the past?

Please see the section about job weights above. Job weights apply to jobs in the past, present, and future.

We realize that your rental jobs must be done in a specific order according to how to operate your deliveries and pickups, so you may still see this flag due to the actual order the jobs are performed on or before a certain date. 

Unless you need to have jobs listed in specific order for historical purposes, if you see the invalid product availability alert for dates in the past, if you drag and drop the jobs to balance your inventory, then the flags for jobs in the past should go away.

Next Steps

If you have tried everything above and you still see the Invalid Product Availability alert, please submit a help request to ServiceCore support and we will take a look to see what's going on.