Safety Stock Strategy

A Safety Stock partitioning strategy holds back a buffer of stock from every SKU before splitting the rest among the stores on a warehouse. Use it when the same warehouse feeds multiple channels and you want to keep some headroom in reserve to absorb timing gaps between an order on one channel and the inventory update on another.

Safety Stock is the only strategy type available today; the other types in the Strategy Type list are coming in future releases.

Create a Safety Stock strategy

1. Click Automation → Inventory Partitioning in the sidebar.
2. Click New Strategy in the top right.
3. The New Partitioning Strategy modal opens.

1. Choose the Merchant — the strategy applies to a single merchant. The warehouse is inferred from the merchant’s connections.
2. Leave Strategy Type on Safety Stock (the other types are not yet available).
3. Configure the Safety Stock Configuration:
   • Buffer Type — Percentage or Fixed Quantity.
   • Buffer Percentage (or Buffer Quantity) — how much to reserve.
   • Distribution Method — Equal is the only choice today; weighted distribution is coming soon.
   • Minimum Distributable — if the available quantity drops below this floor after the buffer is subtracted, DropStream pushes 0 to every store instead of partial allocations.
4. Click Create Strategy.

The strategy is created in the Active state and starts shaping inventory pushes on the next Smart Sync or Full Sync.

What the configuration means

Buffer Type and Buffer Percentage / Quantity

The buffer is the amount reserved before any distribution happens. It comes off the top of the warehouse’s available quantity for every SKU.

• Percentage — reserves that percentage of the available quantity. With a 10% buffer and an available quantity of 100, the buffer is 10 units and the distributable quantity is 90.
• Fixed Quantity — reserves the same flat number of units for every SKU. With a buffer quantity of 5 and an available quantity of 100, the distributable quantity is 95. With an available quantity of 4, the distributable quantity is 0 (the buffer always wins).

Distribution Method

Once the buffer is subtracted, the distributable quantity is split among the stores connected to the warehouse:

• Equal — divided as evenly as possible across the connected stores. With 90 units and 3 stores, each store gets 30.

When the division isn’t even (91 units across 3 stores), DropStream allocates the remainder to one of the stores rather than truncating; the total pushed across all stores equals the distributable quantity.

Minimum Distributable

A floor on the distributable quantity. If the post-buffer quantity is below this number, no inventory is pushed — every store gets 0 for that SKU. Use this when allocating a tiny number of units across many stores doesn’t make sense for your operation (for example, you’d rather show out-of-stock than offer 1 unit on each of 5 channels and risk overselling).

A value of 0 (the default) disables the floor; any positive remainder is distributed.

Worked examples

These all use 3 stores connected to the warehouse, Equal distribution, Min Distributable = 0.

With Min Distributable = 10 and an available of 12 / 10% buffer: distributable is 10.8 → floor 10 (above the minimum), pushed 4, 3, 3. Drop available to 11: distributable is 9.9 → below the minimum, pushed 0, 0, 0.

Manage an existing strategy

From the strategy detail page, the page header has Edit and Deactivate (or Activate, when inactive). The list view’s row kebab menu has View Details, Edit Strategy, Deactivate, and Delete.

Edit a strategy

Click Edit to open the Edit Strategy modal. You can change every field — buffer type, buffer amount, distribution method, minimum distributable. The merchant and warehouse are not editable after creation; if those need to change, deactivate or delete this strategy and create a new one.

Changes take effect on the next inventory sync.

Deactivate vs delete

• Deactivate keeps the strategy and its configuration but stops applying it. Inventory pushes revert to the un-partitioned behavior (full warehouse quantity to every store) until you reactivate. Useful for short windows where you want to push full availability — peak shopping events, manual inventory pushes during a transition, etc.
• Delete removes the strategy entirely. You’d need to recreate it from scratch to bring it back. Pick this when the strategy is wrong, not just paused.

Both actions ask for confirmation. Neither rewrites any inventory levels already on the channel — they take effect on the next sync.

When a strategy doesn’t apply

A strategy only affects merchants/warehouses it’s configured for. SKUs from a warehouse with no active strategy are pushed using the warehouse’s full available quantity to every listing.

Bundles use their components’ post-partition quantities to compute the bundle’s pushed quantity. See Bundle products for the bundle math.