Discontinued Products
Mark a product discontinued to sell through your remaining stock completely and stop it from cluttering reorder suggestions — without deactivating it.
What marking a SKU discontinued does
Some products you rotate out over time — you want them to sell down to nothing rather than keep restocking, and you don’t want them showing up as something to reorder. Marking a SKU discontinued does exactly that, while it keeps selling and syncing like any other product.
It sells all the way to zero. Marking a SKU discontinued removes its Inventory Reserve buffer everywhere it's stocked, so the true remaining quantity publishes to every connected channel instead of a shortened one. If you use Dynamic Cloak™, its display cap stops applying too — a discontinued listing shows its real, sold-down count rather than a randomized one.
It drops out of reorder suggestions. A discontinued SKU is never suggested for reorder — not on the Reorder Suggestions page, not on the dashboard. You're selling it down, not buying more.
It keeps selling and syncing normally. Nothing else changes. Orders still decrement it, it still reports in your ledger and valuation, and it still pushes quantities to every channel — it's just no longer held back or reordered.
It never deactivates the SKU. Discontinued and deactivated are two different things. A discontinued SKU stays fully active until you decide otherwise — when it sells out completely, Carpe Inventory IQ suggests deactivating it, but it never does so on its own.
Mark a SKU discontinued
Edit the SKU, select rows on the SKUs list, or use a CSV
For one SKU, open Edit from the SKUs page and flip the Discontinued switch (next to Active). For several at once, select their rows on the SKUs page and choose Set status → Mark discontinued. Spreadsheet-driven? The SKU importer accepts an optional Discontinued column — see “Marking SKUs discontinued via CSV” below.
Review the impact
The confirm dialog shows how many active recipes the SKU (or selection) is a component of, and how many open purchase orders reference it — so you're not surprised later.
For a bundle built from components (a Dynamic BOM), the dialog also notes that the bundle sells down to its own components' reserve floor — see "Bundles and components" below.
Confirm
Click Mark discontinued in the confirm dialog. A slate Discontinued badge (with the date) appears on the SKU everywhere it's shown — the SKU detail page, the SKUs list, and Inventory rows.
Channel quantities update
Every stocking location — and, for a component, every bundle that consumes it — gets re-pushed with the un-reserved quantity. Small changes update immediately; larger ones (a bulk selection, or an import that flips many SKUs at once) finish in the background. Exactly when each channel reflects it varies — some update within moments, others take longer.
Sold out and ready to deactivate
Once a discontinued SKU’s real stock reaches zero everywhere — including any units held in marketplace fulfillment — its slate Discontinued badge becomes an amber Discontinued — sold out badge on the SKUs list and on Inventory rows.
A one-click Deactivate link appears next to the badge on the SKUs list. If something still blocks deactivation — for example, it’s still an active component in another product’s recipe, or it’s in an open physical count, transfer, or inbound shipment — the confirm dialog shows the specific reason instead of just refusing silently. Clear the blocker and the same link deactivates it.
Deactivating a discontinued SKU is always a manual choice. Carpe Inventory IQ will never deactivate one for you — a return or a late restock landing right after sellout shouldn’t have to fight an automatic flip.
Bundles and components
Marking a bundle (a build-to-order Dynamic BOM finished good) discontinued sells that listing down — but its components keep their own Inventory Reserve unless you mark them discontinued too. To sell a bundle out completely, discontinue its components along with the bundle itself; the confirm dialog reminds you of this when it applies.
While a discontinued bundle is still selling down, it keeps driving real demand for its components — that’s correct, not a bug, since its orders genuinely consume component stock. To make that visible, the components’ demand-source breakdown on Reorder Suggestions carries a slate Discontinuedchip next to the bundle’s name, so you can see why the demand is still there.
Purchase orders
A discontinued SKU can still go on a purchase order — a deliberate final closeout buy is never blocked. The line-item SKU picker shows a discontinued badge next to a matching result, and adding one to a PO shows a dismissible notice on that line as a heads-up, not a restriction.
Marking SKUs discontinued via CSV
The SKU importer accepts an optional Discontinued column, using the same yes/no format as the Track Lots and Require Expiry columns (yes/no, y/n, true/false, or 1/0, case-insensitive). Leave the cell blank to leave a SKU’s status untouched.
Importing yes for a SKU that’s already discontinued is a no-op: its original discontinued date is preserved rather than reset, so re-running the same file doesn’t disturb your audit trail. Any row that actually flips a SKU’s status triggers the same channel resync described above.
The SKU export includes the same Discontinued column (yes/no), so you can export your catalog, edit the column in a spreadsheet, and re-import it directly.
Things to know
Selling out the last units accepts some oversell risk
Removing the reserve on a discontinued SKU's final units is the point — it's how it actually sells out — but it does mean the usual oversell protection is off for those last units if you sell the same stock across more than one channel. That's expected for a product you're retiring, not a defect.
Per-location behavior follows each channel's own rules
Sell-out drains whatever quantity each channel already tracks for a SKU — it doesn't pool locations together. Amazon and Walmart receive per-location values; eBay receives your primary location's quantity only. This is unchanged from normal syncing, but it's worth knowing when you're watching a discontinued SKU sell down on more than one channel.
Undoing discontinued re-applies the reserve immediately
Flip the Discontinued switch off in the Edit SKU panel, or select rows and choose Set status → Undo discontinued. The SKU's Inventory Reserve applies again right away — and if what's left on hand is at or below that reserve, the listing publishes 0 immediately rather than jumping back up to the real count. That's expected, not a bug, and it corrects itself as stock comes back in.
Sold-out numbers are as of the last marketplace sync
The amber "Discontinued — sold out" badge and the eligibility check behind one-click Deactivate both read the same marketplace fulfillment snapshot — not a live, real-time count. If a SKU has units sitting in FBA, WFS, or AWD, the badge reflects the last time that fulfillment data synced.
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