Gross quantity vs available quantity

Gross quantity is everything physically on a pallet. Available quantity is gross minus whatever has already been allocated to a delivery. Both are correct at the same time, and confusing them is the most common reason a stock report and a shelf appear to disagree.

Allocation is not the only thing that separates them. Stock can be blocked by quality, moved into quarantine pending a decision, or staged for a truck. In each case the material is present and countable but not sellable, so a system that reports one number for all of it will mislead whoever reads it.

The practical test is whether a report says which figure it is showing. A warehouse manager asking what is in the building, a planner asking what can be promised to a customer, and a finance team asking what is on the balance sheet are asking three different questions about the same pallets. Keeping gross and available apart everywhere is also what makes an availability guard possible, because the guard needs to know what is genuinely free before it can protect an earlier delivery.