Explainer

Available to Sell lists, explained

An Available to Sell report, or ATS, is a seller's own list of the inventory it is offering: style, color, size and quantity, as its system understands them on the day the file is produced. In an off-price transaction it is not a marketing document. It is the description of the goods the buyer is buying.

By The Retail Ledger · September 27, 2026

What is actually in the file

An ATS export comes out of the seller's inventory system and typically carries a row per SKU: style number, description, color, size, and the quantity the system believes is available. Good files also carry a location, a season code and an original ticket price. The buyer writes its purchase order from those rows, often attaching the file to the order itself so that the two documents describe the same thing.

What the file does not carry is condition. An ATS row does not distinguish a carton that has been opened and repacked from one that has never moved, and it does not describe damage. Those are handled, if at all, by separate terms.

Why it is treated as the description of the goods

In a normal wholesale purchase the buyer specifies what it wants and the seller fills the order. In a closeout deal the direction reverses: the seller specifies what exists, and the buyer selects from it. That inversion is why the ATS file carries so much weight. It is the only description of the merchandise the buyer has before the trucks arrive, and it was produced by the party that holds the goods.

It follows that the accuracy of the file is the central commercial term of the deal, whether or not the contract says so. A file that overstates core sizes and understates extended sizes does not change the unit count. It changes the value of every unit.

Where ATS files go wrong

Timing is the common one. An ATS snapshot is true on the day it is generated, and large inventories move daily. A file that is three weeks old at the time an order is written will differ from what ships, and whether that difference is material depends on how large it is and in which direction it runs.

Aggregation is the second. A file that reports at style level rather than size level hides exactly the variable that determines value. A buyer who accepts a style-level file has agreed to learn the size composition after delivery.

System hygiene is the third. Extended-size units that were never properly retired from a system, returns that were restocked to the wrong SKU, and packaway lots that carry old season codes all show up as rows that do not correspond to sellable goods.

What a buyer should insist on

Size-level granularity, a dated file, the file attached to the purchase order rather than referenced by name, and a written tolerance: if the delivered composition differs from the file by more than an agreed percentage across a size band, there is a defined consequence. Without that last term, the file is a description with no remedy behind it.

Questions

What does ATS stand for?

Available to Sell. It is the seller’s report of inventory on hand and available for purchase, usually exported from its own inventory system.

Is an ATS list a contract?

Not by itself. It becomes contractually meaningful when it is attached to or incorporated into a purchase order, which is why buyers attach the file rather than referring to it.

How current is an ATS file?

It is a snapshot as of the moment it is produced. In a large inventory it starts drifting immediately, which is why the file should carry a date and why large orders written from an old file are risky.

What is the difference between ATS and on-hand inventory?

On-hand is everything in the building. ATS is the subset the seller is willing and able to sell, after reservations, allocations and holds.