Kounta Stock Sync

You can now choose to only change product availability in Kounta, and have that automatically reflected in MOBI.

When you run out of a certain item, you don’t want your customers trying to place orders only to have them fail because the product is no longer available. As explained in this Stock Management article, you need to ensure the item is set out of stock in both your POS and in the MOBI stock manager.

Kounta offers the functionality to let MOBI know when an item’s availability status has changed, and MOBI will change the status accordingly. By enabling this new feature, you no longer need to change status in MOBI as well as the POS, which can take some time amid a busy service.

How does it work?

When enabled, if an item’s status is changed to out of stock, the status will be reflected in MOBI’s stock management page, as well as on the storefront, preventing customers from ordering it. When the product is set back in stock on Kounta, this syncs to MOBI and it will be available on the storefront again. 

We use the PLU to look up the item and match it to all items that have that PLU. If multiple products in MOBI share the same PLU, they will all be updated.

How do I enable it?

This setting needs to be enabled at Location level, given each store manages its own stock. 

1. You’ll need to ensure you are on the ‘Manage’ or ‘Extend’ POS plan to enable Kounta’s product availability add-on feature. You can add the feature on to your Kounta backoffice by following the instructions here.
2. In MOBI, go to your location dispatcher settings, and change the setting to Enable.

As soon as the setting is enabled, any new changes made in Kounta will be reflected in MOBI. The sync only begins once it’s turned on, so any items that were already marked out of stock on Kounta, but not MOBI, will stay that way. 

FAQs

How quickly is the stock updated in MOBI?

Kounta doesn’t make any promises around how quickly we receive a product availability notification, but it's usually within a second or two. 

Does this work for modifiers as well?

Kounta does not support product availability for modifiers - meaning restaurants are unable to mark modifiers as out of stock on Kounta POS. Restaurants will need to use MOBI admin to mark a modifier out of stock.

If I mark an item out of stock in MOBI, will it reflect in Kounta?

The sync is only one direction, from Kounta to MOBI. This means any changes made in MOBI stock admin will not sync over to Kounta.

Can we make use of Kounta’s stock levels feature?

Kounta has a concept of stock levels while MOBI does not - e.g. “5 cheeseburgers remaining”. MOBI is only able to take action when a product availability status changes, but not when the number of items decreases. 

If there was 1 cheeseburger left, and a customer put through an order for 1 cheeseburger, the order will dispatch correctly, Kounta will send MOBI a notification that the product is now out of stock, and the status in MOBI will be changed. However, if the customer tried to order 2 cheeseburgers, MOBI would see this as a valid order, but the Kounta API will reject the order, as there isn’t enough stock to fulfill it. To the customer this will just look like any other failed order.

What will the stock statuses be?

The statuses in MOBI will be either ‘Available’ or ‘Sold Out Indefinitely’. Kounta doesn’t have a concept of an ‘until’ time - e.g. “Cheeseburger sold out until tomorrow” - so it’s either available or not, and when it's back in stock, it will need to be manually made available in Kounta POS.

If you require any assistance in setting this up, please contact MOBI Support here.