The units available for tracking quantity: weight, length, volume and count.
Sortly API
The Sortly API lets you work with your inventory from your own systems: add and update items, keep stock levels in sync, and track what goes out on a job.
Available on the Sortly Enterprise Plan. All requests go to https://api.sortly.co over HTTPS and return JSON. Email dev-support@sortly.com with questions or issues.
New here? Start with Getting Started, then read Items and Folders so the vocabulary in the endpoint reference makes sense. Once you know what you're building, jump to the matching Use Case Guide.
Goal: keep Sortly jobs in step with the work orders in your external system, from the moment one is raised to the moment it closes, so field staff work against accurate inventory and nobody keys the same movement in twice.
A job is a work order. Creating one also creates a folder to hold the items assigned to it. Jobs move through three statuses: not_started, in_progress, completed.
Each subsection below maps to one event in your system. Your system owns the job lifecycle and drives each of these calls; where you need to see the state on the Sortly side, read it with GET /api/v1/jobs on whatever schedule suits you.
Goal: keep Sortly purchase orders in step with the accounting or ordering system you buy through, so both sides agree on what was ordered, what it costs and where it has got to.
A purchase order records what you ordered from a vendor and on what terms, with a list of line items drawn from your inventory. You don't need to send amount, sub_total, total or line_number: Sortly works them out from the lines.
How an order moves:
draft,ready_for_reviewandapprovedcan each move to one another, or on toordered- From
orderedyou can requestvoidedorclosed - From
ordered, receiving stock also moves the order topartially_receivedand thenreceived, through the receive flow rather than a status call - From
partially_receivedorreceived, the only status you can request isclosed voidedandclosedare final
For the transitions themselves, see Manage PO Statuses.
Goal: move a Sortly purchase order to match where it has got to in your own process, whether that decision was made in another system or over email.
Every transition uses the same endpoint and the same two fields: the target status and the version you got from your last read.
- A stale
versionis rejected with409. Read immediately before writing, and retry with the new one. - Sending a status the order already has changes nothing, so a retried delivery is safe.
| From | Can move to |
|---|---|
draft, ready_for_review, approved | each other, or ordered |
ordered | voided or closed |
partially_received, received | closed |
voided, closed | final |
Anything outside that returns 400. received and partially_received cannot be requested here at all: Sortly sets them when a delivery is recorded against the order, either in the app or through the receive endpoint.
Unlike the transitions above, you do not request this one. Recording a delivery sets it: partially_received once some of the ordered quantity has arrived, received once all of it has.
The status endpoint rejects
receivedandpartially_received. Receive against the order instead and Sortly moves the status for you.
curl -X POST 'https://api.sortly.co/api/v1/purchase_orders/4471/receive' \
-H 'Authorization: Bearer YOUR_SECRET_KEY' \
-H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
-d '{ "line_items": [ { "line_item_id": 204, "received_quantity": "12" } ] }'The work runs in the background and lines can fail on their own, so poll the receive to see where it got to. See Mark a PO as Received for the whole flow, including the reason_id you need and how to read a partial failure.
Once everything has arrived, the order can be moved to closed. See Mark a PO as Closed.
Once an order has been received and nothing further is expected of it, take it out of circulation so nobody keeps working against it. Which status you use depends on what happened:
closedis the normal end. The order ran its course, the stock arrived, and there is nothing left to do. It is what Sortly calls a completed order, and it can be reached fromordered,partially_receivedorreceived.voidedis for an order that was cancelled rather than fulfilled, so the record stays but the order is written off. Only anorderedorder can be voided.
Neither applies to a draft. A draft you no longer want is deleted in the Sortly app rather than given an end status.
curl -X PUT 'https://api.sortly.co/api/v1/purchase_orders/4471/status' \
-H 'Authorization: Bearer YOUR_SECRET_KEY' \
-H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
-d '{ "status": "closed", "version": 4 }'Voiding is the same call with "status": "voided".
Both are final. Nothing moves out of closed or voided, so this is the one transition worth being sure about before you send it. A partially received order can be closed on the quantity that arrived, and the outstanding lines simply stop being expected.
Items are the things you track: stock, tools, assets, supplies. Each one has a quantity and can carry a price, photos, tags and custom fields.
Items and folders share these endpoints; type is what tells them apart. Pass "type": "item" here. For the folder side of the same endpoints, see Folders.
Operations
Folders are how you organize inventory by location, category, job, or whatever fits how you work. They can be nested, and items live inside them.
Folders use the same endpoints as items, with "type": "folder" and no quantity or price. Nest one inside another by setting parent_id; leave it out for the top level. To list a folder's contents, pass its id as folder_id when listing items.
Operations
Purchase orders record what you have ordered from a vendor and on what terms. Each one carries vendor and ship-to details plus a list of line items drawn from your inventory.
How an order moves:
draft,ready_for_reviewandapprovedcan each move to one another, or on toordered- From
orderedyou can requestvoidedorclosed - Receiving stock moves an
orderedorder topartially_receivedand thenreceived, through the receive flow rather than a status call - From
partially_receivedorreceived, the only status you can request isclosed voidedandclosedare final
Use the status endpoint for these transitions rather than the update endpoint.
Operations
Aug 5, 2026. Added Purchase Orders: list, create, fetch, update and change status.
Jul 31, 2026. Added Jobs: list, create, fetch, update, change status and delete, plus adding items to a job and returning them.
Jun 17, 2021. Added yard and gallon units of measure.
Jun 5, 2021. Added support for item variants (Item Groups).
Jan 4, 2021. Renamed attribute_value to value on custom field values (attribute_value still works). Added tags to item reads and search.
Sep 1, 2020. Added the search endpoint.
Jun 15, 2020. Added alerts.
Mar 2, 2019. First release.