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AIM shows more than one number for the same shoe, and they are not redundant. Each answers a different question, and the gap between them is usually the interesting part.

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The two numbers you will use most

Available answers what is still unspoken for? It is the pool AIM draws from when something sells. Ready to list answers what can be offered for sale right now? It starts from Available and removes pairs that are unsellable for a reason. Neither is a count of what is on your shelf. That distinction matters most with reservations, below.
A size showing 6 available but 2 ready to list is not a counting error. It is four pairs telling you they need something — a condition check, a putaway, an inspection.

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What sits between them

Three things pull Ready to list below Available. Damaged pairs. A pair flagged as not sellable. Still yours, still on the shelf, still counted in Available — but AIM will not offer it on any channel. Flagging damage takes a pair out of circulation without pretending it vanished. Pairs still being processed. Stock that has arrived but has not finished the steps your business requires after receiving — authentication, putaway to a shelf or bin. Quarantined stock. Pairs AIM will not offer, for one of two reasons: they sit in a sublocation you have marked as not sellable from, or their cost was never confirmed. A pair with no confirmed cost cannot be sold cleanly — the sale would fail partway — so AIM stops offering it rather than letting it attract orders it cannot fulfil. Ready to list never goes below zero. If the holds add up to more than you have, it stops at zero rather than going negative.

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Reserved stock has already left Available

This is the one that surprises people, so it is worth stating plainly. Reserving a pair removes it from Available immediately. It does not sit alongside Available waiting to be subtracted — the moment you reserve, that unit is spoken for and the Available number drops. So you should not do this arithmetic:
Available minus Reserved double-counts the same pairs. Those units were already taken out of Available when the reservation was made.
The Reserved count is there to tell you how much of your stock is currently committed, and to trace which order committed it. It is a record of claims, not a pending deduction. That is also why Available is not the same as “what is physically in the building”. Your physical count is the Available pairs plus the reserved ones still sitting on the shelf waiting to be picked.

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Why Available can go negative

Available can drop below zero, and this is deliberate. It happens when more is sold than the system thought existed — most often when two sales channels sell the last pair at nearly the same moment. Rather than clamping to zero and hiding it, AIM records what actually happened: you owe one more pair than you have. A negative number is a to-do, not corruption. It clears as soon as you receive stock or correct the count, and it stays visible until you do.

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Channels can disagree about what is sellable

Ready to list is AIM’s own answer. Individual sales channels apply their own rules on top, so the quantity a marketplace shows will not always match it exactly. If one channel is offering a different number from another, that is usually the channel’s eligibility rules at work rather than a stock discrepancy.

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Where each number comes from

  • Inventory shows Available and Ready to list side by side for every size and location, and is where you correct a count.
  • Row history shows every adjustment ever made to a size, with who made it and why.
  • Individual units breaks a size into the specific physical pairs behind it, each with its own cost and history.
When a number looks wrong, open the history before adjusting it. Most surprising counts already have an explanation recorded, and adjusting on top of a real event turns one discrepancy into two.