Inflow Inventory

Inflow Inventory

Inflow Inventory is cloud inventory management for stock, purchase orders, and sales. Every API call is scoped to one company via the Company ID on the credential.

Data Model

• Catalog — products, categories, and stocking locations.
• Procurement & sales — purchase orders and sales orders driving stock in/out.
• Inventory events — cycle counts, warehouse transfers, and cost corrections.
• Trading partners — customers and vendors with linked transactions.
• Reference data — tax codes, currencies, and custom fields that shape documents.

Capabilities

• Read — list or fetch by id for products, customers, vendors, orders, stock events, and reference data. On products, barcodes and BOM lines are side-loaded — they are not on the base object. Use include=productBarcodes for barcode values and include=itemBoms for bill-of-materials on manufacturable products (not billOfMaterials), or use the dedicated BOM read for one assembly. Stock by warehouse: get_product_stock / batch stock summaries, or include=inventoryLines.location on full product reads. Order lines and receive lines need explicit include values (for example lines, lines.product, receiveLines on purchase orders).
• Write — create and update via PUT to collection endpoints with a GUID in the body. Omit id on insert to auto-generate a GUID. Sales and manufacturing order updates support partial merges when you pass line patches instead of replacing the whole document. Purchase order receiving and unreceiving have dedicated workflow tools.
• Delete — only count sheets and webhooks support hard delete; deactivate customers, vendors, and products with isActive: false instead.

Workflow Patterns

1. Catalog browse — read categories and locations, then read products with get_product_stock or include=inventoryLines.location for quantities by stock room. Add productBarcodes when barcode values matter; use the BOM read tool or include=itemBoms on manufacturable assemblies.
2. Trading partner setup — upsert customers and vendors, then reference their ids on sales and purchase orders.
3. Order flow — resolve customerId / vendorId from reads before upserting sales or purchase orders (both ids are required on create). Fetch orders with include=lines (and lines.product when names matter) before triage or receiving.
4. Receiving — read the purchase order with include=lines,receiveLines, then use the receive purchase order tool for remaining quantities or explicit line amounts.
5. Stock movement — read locations first; stock transfers require fromLocationId and toLocationId on create. Use get_sublocations for bin/shelf suggestions.
6. Serial numbers — read product serials via get_product_serials (inventory lines) or order serials via get_order_serials. Serialized product lists accept trackSerials=true on product reads.
7. Record lifecycle — customers, vendors, and products are retired with isActive: false; most entity types have no hard-delete endpoint.

Gotchas

• Company ID is not discoverable: inFlow has no endpoint to resolve the company GUID from the API key alone — calls fail without the correct Company ID on the credential.
• PUT-only writes: There is no POST or PATCH. Every insert and update is PUT /{companyId}/{resource} with the entity JSON body including its id field.
• Categories are read-only: Product categories cannot be created or updated through the API.
• Pagination: List endpoints accept count (max 100), skip, sort, and include query parameters. Upstream default page size is 20 when count is omitted — set count when you need more than the first page.
• Concurrency: Include the timestamp from the last read when updating records, or inFlow may return HTTP 409 if another user changed the row first.
• Product barcodes: There is no top-level barcode field on the default product payload. Request include=productBarcodes; each row exposes a barcode string inside the productBarcodes array. Do not send top-level barcode on product upserts — upstream rejects it.
• Product includes: Valid side-loads on get_products are inventoryLines, inventoryLines.location, productBarcodes, itemBoms, category, cost, defaultPrice, and vendorItems. customFields is not a product relationship — it 400s on both list and single fetch; use get_custom_fields for field definitions. billOfMaterials / bomLines are wrong names — use itemBoms.
• Bill of materials: Request include=itemBoms on manufacturable products, or use the dedicated BOM read tool. Reverse where-used (which assemblies consume a component) is not a dedicated inFlow endpoint — scan manufacturable products or use manufacturing-order reads.
• Order side-loads: Sales order line items, purchase order lines, and receive lines are not on the base order object. Request the appropriate include values or dedicated serial/stock tools.