Resolve Inventory Availability and Serial Number Errors

This article includes troubleshooting steps for both single-yard and multiple-yard accounts. If you don't see Yards in your account yet, this feature will be available to you soon.

ServiceCore keeps an eye on your inventory for you. When something's off, you'll see a banner or alert pointing you straight to the problem instead of having to go looking for it.

Most of these issues come down to the same handful of causes:

• A job that wasn't completed.
• A product quantity that wasn't updated correctly.
• A rental that wasn't closed out.
• A serial number that got linked to the wrong unit.

This article covers different scenarios that may match what you're experiencing so you can figure out the cause and resolve it. 

TIP: If you manage inventory across more than one yard, a few of the scenarios call out extra considerations specific to multi-yard accounts.

Before You Start

Here are a few things to know before you continue:

• To see if you have access to this feature in ServiceCore, please check out this article on user permission levels.
• Before troubleshooting an availability count, check your Inventory Management widget on your ServiceCore Dashboard. The "Jobs with Missing Items" or "Jobs with Missing Serial Numbers" widget will surface up to five recent jobs completed without all serial numbers or items selected. Both are common drivers of count discrepancies.
• Your availability count reflects expected end-of-day totals, not a real-time snapshot. If your count looks off, click on any number in the availability table to see a breakdown of what's affecting it that day. The tooltip shows deliveries and pick-ups scheduled for that day with links directly to each job. If the numbers make sense once you account for jobs still scheduled to be completed, no action is needed. For live counts, go to Settings > Inventory > Products and review the "In Yard(s)" column for the product.
• Your account may have the “Allow Overselling Available Inventory?” setting enabled, which intentionally allows more units to be booked than are physically available. If your count looks lower than expected, check this setting first under Settings > Company > Preferences > Rentals. Click here to learn more about product availability and how this setting works.
• Exchange jobs with matching inventory being dropped off and picked up, don't affect your availability count. One unit goes out, one comes in, so the net impact is zero.
• Historical availability data only goes back to 2/4/2026. Activity before that date isn't included.

What Are You Seeing? 

If the error you're running into is listed below, click on it to jump straight to that section:

• My Availability Is Showing a Negative Number
• My Availability Doesn't Match What I Expect
• There's an Unknown Serial Number on a Rental
• My Serial Number Count Is Higher Than My On-Site Quantity
• A Unit's Location is at a Yard When It Should be Out on a Rental
• I Have Serial Number Issues Across Multiple Rentals

My Inventory Availability Is Showing a Negative Number

Negative availability means one of two things happened:

1. More units were booked than are physically available, meaning products were added to Delivery Jobs when there isn't anything to actually deliver.
2. Old rentals were never properly closed out with a Pick-Up job.

Resolve Negative Availability: Single Yard

If you have a single yard, follow these steps:

1. Click into “Rentals”.
2. Click into "Inventory".
3. Click into "Products".
4. Review the number of units of the product are “Rented”.

5. Click the hyperlinked Product name. 

   
   
    

6. Click the "In Progress Rentals" tab on the Product’s Details page.

   
   
    

7. Review rentals and identify any rentals that should already be closed.

8. Schedule and complete a pick-up job for each of those rentals to return the units to your yard.

   
   

Resolve Negative Availability: Multiple Yards

If you have multiple yards, follow these steps:

1. Click into "Rentals".
2. Click into "Inventory".
3. Click into "Availability".

4. Use the Filter to show all yards, if “All” is not selected for “Yard”.

   
   
    

5. Check whether availability exists at a yard you weren't expecting.

If availability exists at another yard: 

Either update the yard on the original delivery job, or create a Transfer Job to move that inventory to the correct location. If the units are already physically at that yard, complete an Internal Transfer instead.

If no availability exists at any yard: 

Go to Rentals > Inventory > Products, confirm the units currently out on rental, then click into the product’s and go to its In Progress Rentals and complete a pick-up job for any rentals that should already be closed.

My Inventory Availability Doesn't Match What I Expect

Your availability reflects an expected end-of-day, per-product total: what's in your yard right now plus today's remaining Pick-Ups minus today's remaining Deliveries. Out of Service units are removed from your availability too.

If your availability looks inaccurate first thing in the morning or during the day, it's often due to that day's jobs still being worked through. Check again once the day's jobs are complete.

Availability mismatches that persist usually occur for one of the below reasons:

1. Rentals were never closed with a Pick-Up job.
2. Delivery or Pick-Up jobs were marked 'Unable to Service' or not updated by the driver at all.
3. Pick-Up jobs don't have the correct product quantity.
4. Delivery jobs were completed and then cancelled, but the product quantity wasn't updated.
5. A product is sitting in a different yard than expected (multi-yard accounts only).

Because there are different reasons why your availability may not match what you're expecting, ServiceCore displays a banner whenever it detects items 1-4 listed above (or something else that means a product's unit count doesn't match your In Progress rentals).

It's meant to catch inventory issues early and help you find the rentals that may have incomplete jobs or still have units marked onsite that shouldn't be/aren't.

The banner includes a link to the rentals that ServiceCore's identified for you to review and update as needed to fix inventory availability issues. 

To resolve detected mismatches and correct your inventory's availability, just follow the instructions below:

1. From either the Yards tab or the Availability tab, click on the product that you're seeing inaccurate availability for.
   
   
2. Click on the link in the banner at the top of the product's details page.
   
   
   
   TIP: You can also click on the "Mismatches" button in the Rentals tab. This is where the link takes you.
   
   
3. From the list of rentals ServiceCore has flagged for you, click the "View Rental" button.
   
   
4. At the top of the rental's details page, you'll see a banner with the individual jobs ServiceCore has identified as having an inventory issue. Click on the link to review the job's details and update it.
   
   
   
   Please Note: You'll need to review the rental and each flagged job to confirm what action to take.
5.  Repeat Steps 3-4 until all the rentals and their jobs have been corrected. You should now see the correct inventory availability.

Resolve Common Scenarios for Mismatches

Once you've opened a flagged rental or job and reviewed it, you'll need to update it in order to correct your inventory availability.

Rental Doesn't Have a Pick-Up Job

All you have to do is create a Pick-Up job for the rental with the same product(s)/quantity. 

Depending on what happened, you can either dispatch the job like normal to actually retrieve the product(s) or mark it Complete immediately because the product(s) already been picked up.

A Delivery or Pick-Up Job Was Marked 'Unable to Service' and Still Shows a Product Quantity

If a driver marks a Delivery or Pick-Up job as 'Unable to Service', that doesn't automatically return the associated product to your yard. 

If a product quantity is still attached to the job, ServiceCore keeps counting those units as unavailable even though nothing was actually delivered or picked up.

To fix it, just edit the job and change the product's quantity to 0.

After saving your changes, you'll see an updated availability count.

A Pick-Up Job's Quantity Doesn't Match What Was Delivered

Sometimes a Pick-Up job gets marked complete, but the quantity picked up doesn't match what was originally delivered.

For example, if 8 units went out and only 6 came back, the difference stays counted as unavailable even if it was a data entry mistake rather than inventory actually left behind.

To fix it, just edit the Job Completion record and update the quantity to the correct number.

This works the same way whether fewer units were picked up than delivered or more units were picked up than were actually delivered. If you're not sure which is correct, confirm with your customer before adjusting the count. The units may genuinely still be onsite.

Additional Units Were Delivered, but a New Delivery Job Was Never Created

All you have to do is create a new Delivery job and mark it Complete so that the rental now includes the total number of units currently onsite or included in the Pick-Up job.

A Delivery Was Completed and Then Cancelled, but the Quantity Wasn't Updated

If a rental gets cancelled after its Delivery job was already marked complete, that job's product(s) and quantity stays counted as being rented out even though the rental is not active.

To fix it, just edit the Job Completion record and update the quantity to the correct number.

Track Missed Rental Jobs Ahead of Time

The discrepancy banner flags issues as they come up, but you can also check for missed jobs at any point, which is a good end-of-day reconciliation habit to get into for staying ahead of your availability numbers.

To review the list of missed jobs in your account, just follow the instructions below:

1. Click into "Rentals".
2. Click into "Jobs".
3. Click on the "Quick Filters" button.
4. Click on the 'Missed Rental Jobs' option.
   
   

Working through this list regularly, even just clearing a few at a time, keeps small gaps from piling up into bigger discrepancies.

There's an Unknown Serial Number on a Rental

This typically means a driver completed a delivery job without scanning or selecting a serial number, or scanned a unit that belongs to a different rental. Open the rental's Inventory Table and review the serial numbers listed, then find the situation below that matches what you're seeing.

You Know Which Serial Number Should be Associated and the Current One is Showing on a Rental

1. Click into "Rentals".
2. Click into "Inventory".
3. Click into "Items".
4. Locate the Serial Number.
5. Click the drop-down menu for the Serial Number.

6. Select “Update Location”.

   
   
    

7. Select the correct Yard.

8. Click “Confirm”.

   
   

Please Note: Updating the location removes the rental association but doesn't adjust your availability count. The system still counts that unit of that product type at that rental location.

The Serial Number Needs to be Associated with a Different Rental

1. Find the delivery or service job that linked the serial number to the rental.
2. Edit the Job Completion and remove the serial number. This clears it from the rental’s inventory table. 
3. Open the correct rental and associate the serial number with its most recent delivery job.

You Don’t Know Which Serial Number Should be Associated

Your driver can associate the correct serial number during their next service job at that site:

1. Driver opens the ServiceCore Mobile App.
2. Driver starts the service job.
3. Driver selects the serial number of the unit at the rental site.
4. Driver completes the service job.

This replaces the unknown serial number on the rental’s Inventory Table and updates the item’s location to the rental.

My Serial Number Count Is Higher Than My On-Site Quantity

This happens when serial numbers from other rentals have been incorrectly linked, or when a driver scanned a unit that belonged to a nearby rental.

Open the rental's Inventory Table and identify any serial numbers that exceed the on-site quantity.

Then use the steps in the "There's an Unknown Serial Number on a Rental" section above to resolve each one, either by updating the location or reassociating the serial number with the correct rental.

A Unit's Location is at a Yard When It Should be Out on a Rental 

This means the serial number's location wasn't updated when a delivery was completed, or the unit was manually moved to a yard without a corresponding pick-up job.

1. Find the rental the unit should be associated with.
2. Locate the most recent delivery job for that product on that rental.
3. Edit the job completion and associate the correct serial number.
    

Please Note: If a pick-up job was incorrectly completed for this unit, you may need to reopen or adjust that job before reassociating the serial number.

I Have Serial Number Issues Across Multiple Rentals

If you're seeing unknown serial numbers or count discrepancies across several rentals at once, use the Products page to work through them systematically rather than opening each rental individually.

1. Click into "Rentals".
2. Click into "Inventory".
3. Click into "Products”.

4. Click its hyperlinked Product name.

   
   
    

5. Click the "In Progress Rentals" tab on the Product’s Details page.

6. Click open each rental, by clicking the Rental ID number.

   
   
    

7. Check for unknown serial numbers or count discrepancies. 
8. Resolve each one using the steps in the sections above. 
    

TIP: Check the "Jobs with Missing Serial Numbers" widget in the Inventory Management section of your main Dashboard. It shows up to five recent jobs completed without a serial number selected so you can catch and fix these before they accumulate.

 

If you have any questions, please reach out to our Support team through the chat widget on the bottom of this page or by sending an email to support@servicecore.com!