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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.

Download OpenAPI description
index.json
index.yaml
Languages
Servers
https://api.sortly.co

Getting Started

Make your first Sortly API call in about five minutes.

Guides

The mechanics every integration needs, whatever you are building: how to authenticate, how to page through results, what the rate limit costs you, and what Sortly sends back when something goes wrong.

Core Concepts

The vocabulary the endpoint reference assumes you already have. Read these once and the field names in the reference stop needing explanation.

Build Your Inventory

Goal: get your existing inventory into Sortly from a spreadsheet, database or another system.

Every command below runs as-is once you swap in your own secret key.

Manage Your Inventory

Goal: keep the inventory you have already loaded accurate as it changes: what it looks like, how much of it there is, and where it sits.

Track Stock Levels

Goal: be told when something is running low, instead of watching it yourself.

Sync Inventory

Goal: keep another system (an ERP, a warehouse tool, a dashboard) in step with Sortly.

Sync Jobs

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.

Sync Purchase Orders

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_review and approved can each move to one another, or on to ordered
  • From ordered you can request voided or closed
  • From ordered, receiving stock also moves the order to partially_received and then received, through the receive flow rather than a status call
  • From partially_received or received, the only status you can request is closed
  • voided and closed are final

For the transitions themselves, see Manage PO Statuses.

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 version is rejected with 409. 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.
FromCan move to
draft, ready_for_review, approvedeach other, or ordered
orderedvoided or closed
partially_received, receivedclosed
voided, closedfinal

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.

Items

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

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

Custom Fields

The extra fields defined on your account. Fetch these to get the custom_attribute_id values you need when writing custom field values onto items.

Operations

Units of Measure

The units available for tracking quantity: weight, length, volume and count.

Operations

Alerts

Alerts tell your team when stock runs low, or when a date you're tracking is coming up. Two kinds: Quantity and DateReminder.

Operations

Purchase Orders

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_review and approved can each move to one another, or on to ordered
  • From ordered you can request voided or closed
  • Receiving stock moves an ordered order to partially_received and then received, through the receive flow rather than a status call
  • From partially_received or received, the only status you can request is closed
  • voided and closed are final

Use the status endpoint for these transitions rather than the update endpoint.

Operations

Receive Items Against a Purchase Order

Request

Records how much of the ordered quantity has arrived on the lines you name, and unless receive_config.update_strategy says otherwise adds that quantity to the matching Sortly items. Key considerations:

  • The work happens in the background. A successful call returns 202 straight away with the receive pending. Poll GET /api/v1/purchase_orders/{purchase_order_id}/receive/status until it reads completed or failed.
  • One receive at a time per order. Nothing needs carrying between the two calls; starting a second while the first is pending returns 409.
  • Lines can fail individually while the call succeeds. Read the ids out of received_line_item_ids and errors rather than trusting the HTTP status.
  • The order must be ordered or partially_received. Receiving is what moves it on to partially_received and then received, which is why neither can be set through the status endpoint.
  • A line must still be linked to a Sortly item, and no two lines in one request may point at the same item.
Security
BearerAuth
Path
purchase_order_idnumberrequired

ID of the purchase order

Example: 506
Headers
Acceptstring

e.g. application/json

Example: application/json
Authorizationstring

e.g. Bearer

Example: Bearer <Enter Secret Key Here>
Bodyapplication/json
line_itemsArray of objectsrequired

The lines being received, and how much of each has arrived. 1 to 100 lines.

line_items[].​line_item_idnumberrequired

id of the line being received, taken from the purchase order's line_items.

line_items[].​received_quantitystringrequired

How much of this line has arrived now, on top of anything received against it before. Must be greater than zero and no more than the line's quantity less its received_quantity.

line_items[].​folder_idnumber or null

Folder to receive the items into. Defaults to wherever the item already sits.

line_items[].​received_pricestring or null

Price to record on the received item. Only used when update_strategy is with_item_update_no_clone, and ignored under the other two. Defaults to the line's unit_rate.

actionobject
receive_configobject
curl -i -X POST \
  https://api.sortly.co/api/v1/purchase_orders/506/receive \
  -H 'Accept: application/json' \
  -H 'Authorization: Bearer <YOUR_TOKEN_HERE>' \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  -d '{
    "line_items": [
      {
        "line_item_id": 204,
        "received_quantity": "12"
      },
      {
        "line_item_id": 205,
        "received_quantity": "3",
        "folder_id": 87
      }
    ],
    "action": {
      "reason_id": "24863b18-bd4f-4718-a46e-0e68bf969cf6",
      "notes": "Delivered short, driver noted two boxes missing."
    },
    "receive_config": {
      "update_strategy": "with_item_update"
    }
  }'

Responses

Accepted

Headers
Sortly-Rate-Limit-Maxstring
Sortly-Rate-Limit-Remainingstring
Bodyapplication/json
dataobject
Response
application/json
{
  "data": {
    "status": "pending",
    "received_line_item_ids": [],
    "pending_line_item_ids": [ … ],
    "errors": [],
    "error": null,
    "created_at": "2025-03-04T10:15:30Z",
    "updated_at": "2025-03-04T10:15:30Z"
  }
}

Check Receive Status of a Purchase Order

Request

Reports the most recent receive started against this purchase order.

status is one of:

  • pending while lines are still being applied. Keep polling.
  • completed once every line went through.
  • failed if any of them did not.

The line ids are grouped by what happened to them. Every id you sent appears in exactly one of the three, so together they account for the whole request:

  • received_line_item_ids for the lines that were applied
  • pending_line_item_ids for those the receive has not applied
  • errors for the ones that failed, each with its reason

Two things worth knowing:

  • A failed receive can carry ids in pending_line_item_ids with errors empty. That is a receive that fell over before it reached those lines rather than one that rejected them, and error carries the reason. Nothing on those lines was applied.
  • Records are kept once a receive finishes, so this keeps reporting the last one. It returns 404 only until something has been received against the order for the first time.
Security
BearerAuth
Path
purchase_order_idnumberrequired

ID of the purchase order

Example: 506
Headers
Acceptstring

e.g. application/json

Example: application/json
Authorizationstring

e.g. Bearer

Example: Bearer <Enter Secret Key Here>
curl -i -X GET \
  https://api.sortly.co/api/v1/purchase_orders/506/receive/status \
  -H 'Accept: application/json' \
  -H 'Authorization: Bearer <YOUR_TOKEN_HERE>'

Responses

OK

Headers
Sortly-Rate-Limit-Maxstring
Sortly-Rate-Limit-Remainingstring
Bodyapplication/json
dataobject
Response
application/json
{
  "data": {
    "status": "failed",
    "received_line_item_ids": [ … ],
    "pending_line_item_ids": [],
    "errors": [ … ],
    "error": null,
    "created_at": "2025-03-04T10:15:30Z",
    "updated_at": "2025-03-04T10:15:34Z"
  }
}

Jobs

Jobs are work orders. Create a job, assign items to it, move it through not_started, in_progress and completed, and return items when it's done.

Operations

Changelog

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.

© Sortly Inc.