Having a clear warehouse structure is critical to your business when storing and managing physical products. The warehouse structure makes it easier to organize and locate products, optimizes storage space, reduces errors when storing and retrieving goods, and improves workflows and efficiency. It also promotes adaptability, increases customer satisfaction, and improves the profitability of your business.
Getting started with a warehouse structure: A warehouse allows you to keep your products and materials available for sale, while a warehouse helps you keep track of your stocks and see incoming and outgoing goods.
This article is divided into the following sections to provide you with the best possible support in planning your warehouse structure and to give you an overview of the available settings in Xentral:
A warehouse in Xentral can consist of several levels, giving you the option to create different structures and to expand or change them flexibly later. Nevertheless, you should start with an active decision in your new setup to keep your warehouse under control.
Tip
There are a few principles that have proven successful in bearing design:
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Less is more. If you don't know your final warehouse structure today, you can start with a warehouse and refine and expand later. This makes it easier for you to find your process along the way, and you can work your way in piecemeal. There are a few ground rules for a good warehouse structure. If you plan the first step well and avoid too much complexity in parallel, you can get started without losing track and without taking away any flexibility later.
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You already know your warehouse structure? If your previous warehouse structure has proven successful or is relatively simple, you should check at this point whether your target structure in Xentral works well with the workflows or you already know that you want to or need to change certain things. You can take the chance to adjust a few things and will certainly make changes. A proven structure will also help your team keep track of the warehouse (which of course also depends on your product range and team size).
A warehouse in Xentral basically consists of two levels: warehouse and shelves.
You can decide whether a warehouse should be an area, a room, or a building. The same applies to the second level. A shelf can be an actual shelf, a compartment, or a storage box.
Note
In automatic processes, warehouse postings or distribution channels, the booking is usually made from a standard warehouse, i.e. from a “warehouse”. The exact location for the pick process is determined by the “shelf”, i.e. the storage location where the goods are actually located and retrieved.
Choose a designation from consecutive characters such as letters and numbers - without spaces or special characters. For example, you can name your location, your warehouse with “main warehouse” and the shelfs in that warehouse with a numbering such as MW0101A, ...., MW9999Z.
Note
When storing individual products, Xentral gives you the choice of a shelf. This means that you decide either in the goods receipt or directly at the shelf where the goods find their place. This means that you should also know the shelf location by heart in a variety of different ways and can immediately assign which branch, room or aisle your shelf is assigned to.
If you are planning with a variety of places, you can create shelves in the entire system with an identifier.
If your warehouse for product shipment consists of only one room, you can name it directly as your main warehouse and label the places where the products are stored with an identifier, regardless of whether you name each compartment or at one point also an entire shelf or a place on the floor as a shelf / storage location.
However, you should keep in mind that you name the label logically and in a good order for your team. This makes it easier for you to memorize places and know the warehouse after a short time. Even a late pick order is then implemented more quickly and does not require much later change.
Examples of a simple stock split:
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You name your warehouse “main warehouse”
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Name your shelfs / storage locations per shelf compartment or open-plan storage box with the consecutive names: MW001A, ...., MW999Z.
MW → Identifier for your main warehouse: it shows you in Xentral that you have placed the shelf in your main storage room and you do not have to think about which room to go to.
001 → Number for your shelf: choose the number of digits to fit your necessary requirements. The more shelves you need in your room or the smaller your products are, the more digits or letters you need to divide them. For example, you can also use drawer elements for jewelry parts, screws, electronic components and label them individually.
A → Letter for your compartment: choose the number of letters to fit your shelf.
Tip
The longer and more complicated the storage location designations, the harder it is for you and your team to remember them. Think about what you need - are you and your team just looking at the last digit, or at the front of the room to know where to pick the goods?
Strings of equal length also make it easier to find the right place.
Possible good variants - you should first decide on one: M01A, MW001A, MW01AA.
You have several rooms, combine shipping with production and possibly also have a B2B and B2C mixed business? Then you will surely already have more experience in warehouse construction and have a concept planned. Here you will find a few ideas and examples of flexible structures or different combinations.
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You name your warehouse “main warehouse”, “Augsburg”, “Munich”
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You name your shelfs / storage locations per shelf compartment, visible storage box, pallet space, areas etc.
MW → Identifier for your main warehouse, AW → Identifier for warehouse Augsburg, MW → Identifier for warehouse Munich, PW → Identifier for a production warehouse, RW → could be a replenishment storage location
0101 → e.g. 4-digit sequential numbering, the first two digits represent the shelf, the following two are freely selectable for the compartments
A → letter controls the compartment layout for a separate storage box (spare parts) or e.g. an ESD box with several compartment divisions (here, e.g., 2 letters can also be used)
Examples of larger warehouse divisions e.g. Different rooms and mixed business (B2B, B2C):
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You name your warehouse “warehouse3”
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You name your shelfs / storage locations according to this scheme:
W3 → Identifier for your “Warehouse 3”
0 or 1 → identifier for “left shelf” and “right shelf”
AA → Shelf A and compartment A
01 → Compartment Division 01
W30AA01 → Warehouse room 3, left shelf side, shelf A, compartment A, compartment division 01
W31AZ13 → Warehouse room 3, right shelf side, shelf A, compartment Z, compartment division 13
To store products in Xentral, you will need a warehouse and at least one shelf for that warehouse.
Follow these steps to set up a new warehouse in Xentral:
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Open the menu Warehouse > Warehouse Management.
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Click + NEW.
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Enter a name for the new warehouse in the Warehouse field.
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(Optional) Assign the warehouse to a project to restrict it to a specific business area.
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(Optional) Enter a warehouse address—important for consignment warehouses or external production sites.
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Click Save.
You will be redirected to the edit mode of the warehouse, where you can now add shelves.
Steps:
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Open the Storage Locations tab.
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Click Create New Storage Location.
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Assign a name to your storage location (shelf) using a combination of letters and numbers, e.g., HL001, HL0101A.
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Click Save.
Note
You need at least one shelf (= storage location) to store products (goods) in Xentral.
In the tab Import storage locations you can quickly import the storage locations via the open field or a CSV import of the storage locations.
The names of the warehouses can only be a maximum of 15 characters in the regular assignment. Exceeding the 15 characters can cause problems when creating warehouse/shelf labels. You can override this limitation by using the “Shelf Import” function.
Follow these steps to create storage locations using a custom field:
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Go to a warehouse in the warehouse management overview and click the pen icon in the warehouse.
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Go to the Storage Locations tab
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Click on Import Storage Locations.
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Enter the new storage locations separated with ENTER.
Note
If a storage location is accidentally included twice in your input, it will only be created once and not duplicated.
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Click Create Storage Locations. The storage locations will be added.
If you would you prefer to create your storage locations from an existing CSV file. Then use the settings in the Storage Locations CSV Import section to select the appropriate CSV file.
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Go to a Warehouse in the warehouse management overview and click the pen icon in the warehouse.
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Open to the Storage Locations tab.
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Click on Import storage locations.
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Upload your CSV file with the following columns: Storage Location; Order.
The following columns are allowed in your CSV file:
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lagerplatz
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adressid
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nachschublager
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verbrauchslager
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sperrlager
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poslager
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reihenfolge
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laenge
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breite
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hoehe
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lagerplatz
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kategorie
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Click on Create storage locations.
Note
The storage locations will be added, if you accidentally have a storage location twice, it will not be added again.
To enable path optimization during order picking, all storage locations must be assigned a sorting number. This number defines the sequence in which storage locations are visited during picking. Xentral uses this information to calculate the optimal route through the warehouse and minimize unnecessary walking distances. The “Order” field in the CSV import serves exactly this purpose — it defines the sorting of storage locations. An ascending order (e.g., 1, 2, 3 …) reflects the physical layout of the warehouse. The more accurately this sequence mirrors the actual walking paths, the more efficient the picking process becomes.
In Xentral, path optimization is mainly achieved through the Picking-App, Multi-Order-Picking (mobil) and Batch-Kommissionierung erreicht: both methods guide the picker along an optimized route through the warehouse. While Multi-Order Picking automatically calculates the shortest path, batch picking with a pick list reduces walking distances only manually, without dynamic route optimization.
For each created storage location (= shelf) you can print a barcode label via the download function (alternatively a label printer connected by you beforehand).The shelf label helps you and your team to see the shelf spaces faster and supports in logistics processes of shelf bound outsourcing (if you have decided on a logistics process with this function).
You have the following options to print stock labels:
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Download/print a single label for a storage location
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Download/print all labels for one warehouse
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Download / print all labels for a storage location
Follow these steps to download and print a single label for a storage location:
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Go to a Warehouse in the warehouse management overview and click the pen icon in the warehouse.
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Open the Storage locations tab.
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Click on the label icon in the storage location overview.
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Click Download to get the label as a PDF.
Steps to download/print all labels for a warehouse:
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Open the warehouse management module and then the Overview tab.
You are in the Overview tab.
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Click the label icon next to a warehouse.
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Click Download to get the labels as PDF.
Note
You will receive the labels individually in a download folder.If you want to get the labels printed as “strips” via a label printer, you need a label printer that has been connected in Xentral via the print function.
Steps to download/print all labels for a storage location:
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Open the warehouse management module and then the Warehouse Labels tab.
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Go to the Warehouse Labels tab.
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In the warehouse shelf (from) field, select a starting storage location.
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In the warehouse shelf (to) field, define an end storage location.
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Click Print to generate the labels as PDF.
Assigning storage location types - replenishment storage locations, consumption storage locations, quarantine storage locations, production warehouses
You can assign a type to storage locations and specify what purpose it will be used for.
Note
If you do not assign a specific storage location type, the storage location will be used normally for all operations and displayed in user interfaces.
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Replenishment storage locations are not used by logistics but are displayed as inventory on the order.You can manually change replenishment to logistics storage location types at any time and always have your safety stock available.
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Consumption storage locations can be used to check out products with a history.
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Quarantine storage locations are not used by logistics and are not displayed in stocks.
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A Production warehouse is an option for the Production module.
Steps to assign storage types:
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Go to a warehouse in the warehouse management overview and click on the pen icon in the warehouse.
In the Storage Overview, click the pencil icon to edit a storage location.
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Open the desired storage location.
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Open the Storage Locations tab.
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Click the pencil icon to edit a storage location.
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Select the storage type (e.g. replenishment storage location).
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Click on Save.
A replenishment storage location is provided for products that you will only need soon. Orders for logistics do not come from this storage location. The replenishment storage location is a type of “quarantine storage location” that is displayed in the storage calculation, but is not used for picking processes. You can use it if you have long distances in the warehouse or want a safety stock that no one can attack. Only active relocation to a storage location that is used for shipping ensures that purchase orders can access the stock.
If you want to keep a product quantity ready as a replenishment, but you don't want it to be used automatically as an available quantity for your logistics process, or you want to move a product range to the new storage location for picking, you can set one of your storage locations to the type of replenishment storage location, e.g. RW001.
Note
The replenishment storage location will not be suggested for sales orders and productions. For example, the inventory is displayed in the purchase order log for the purchased products of a customer, so that you can see the total stock. If the total product quantity is sufficient for a purchase order, but some of the products are in a replenishment storage location, the purchase order inventory light is displayed orange. For the purchase order suggestion, the goods on a replenishment storage location also count.
If you want to stock in products, but you don't want them to appear in your product overview or in the stock, you can use the type consumption storage location . Stocks are not kept in this storage location, but all products are listed as booking history. The stock can be used for example for "consumption" or "scrapping".
Warning
Attention: If you change a storage location to the type Consumption storage location and stock is already available at the storage locations of this warehouse, this stock will be irretrievably removed from Xentral. This stock cannot be restored even if you change the storage location type back to the previous one.
If you want to stock in products but they are not allowed to be used for logistics, you can use the type quarantine storage location (= non automatic shipping storage location). This storage location can be used for example for "defect returned products" or "internal locked products". You can also stock in office supplies or products that are not intended for sale here.
Note
The sales order storage light will remain red if there are only goods left in this storage location. The goods will also not be considered for the purchase order proposal - it is as if nothing is in stock at all.
Note
The use of the production warehouse type requires the production module.
If you use the Production module and want to limit your warehouse to specific locations from which you can remove for a production, you can set this function for specific warehouses. Once a storage location has enabled this setting, this warehouse will be displayed as the preferred warehouse in production, all warehouses without this setting will no longer be suggested.
If the setting is not set for any warehouse, all warehouses in production are displayed for selection.
When used with the Xentral POS, you can use a warehouse for the removal of the POS.
Set the warehouse type quarantine storage location. You will now get a setting for POS warehouses. Set the check mark so that the POS is enabled to change the stock for these warehouses. Logistics does not access this warehouse.
If you want the POS to access a shipping warehouse, you do not need this setting.
In addition, you can select a warehouse in the POS module that the POS should access.
With a project warehouse, you can link a warehouse or multiple warehouses to a fixed logistics process:
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Project warehouse: A logistics process should access certain warehouses and not others
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Preferred warehouse: One or more logistics processes should access exactly one warehouse
If you want to assign sales orders of a channel to a unique warehouse, you can also assign a warehouse to a project. So a project warehouse is a warehouse that can only be booked by the project that is linked to that warehouse AND the project must also be set as an exclusive warehouse (= project warehouse) (i.e. no other channel can access this project)
Example : You have a Shopify channel in Munich and a Shopware channel in Berlin, so both channels need to be able to access their dedicated warehouse. You have goods that you order in bulk, e.g. food, and can also ship goods from warehouse to warehouse within 2 days. You may also have a replenishment storage location from which you want to serve both warehouses (Munich and Berlin) as needed.
Example B2B : You have a Shopify shop for your B2C customers and a separate B2B warehouse. In this case, you can set up a warehouse (the B2B warehouse) as a project warehouse on a channel e.g. B2B. All sales orders with the project B2B access only the B2B warehouse. All sales orders of the shops and marketplaces are different from the other warehouses.
To create a project warehouse, follow these steps:
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Open the menu: Navigate to Warehouse > Warehouse Management.
Select a warehouse under Warehouse Management and assign it to a project.
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Open the selected storage location: Click to open the desired storage location.
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Assign a project: In the Project field, select a project to link to this storage location.
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Save changes: Click Save.
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Check Project Warehouse under Project > Settings > Logistics / Shipping in the Options section . Leave the Preferred Warehouses field unfilled, as it can also be multiple warehouses.
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Save settings: Click Save again.
A project or x projects take from exactly one warehouse. The following settings are necessary for this use:
Steps preferred bearing:
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DO NOT assign a project to the warehouse under warehouse management, as it can also be multiple projects.
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Select a preferred warehouse under Project > Settings > Logistics / Shipping in the Options section .
You can view the stock in Xentral at the product level, in a warehouse bundled by its storage locations or in an overall overview of all warehouses.
You can view an overview of the total current stock in the Warehouse Management in the tab Stock. Products that are out of stock can be selected in the main filter and it is possible to group products by batch. In the table you can filter by product number, product name, batch, amount of batch , best before date, storage location, project, quantity, availability (= stock including sold products in open sales orders, refers to the total stock) and reserved product quantity.
Tip
Availability of a product can also be found directly in the stock view in the product, where the availability of the product is displayed and calculated.
Example: Stock: 14 | Reserved: 0 | Open sales orders: 5 | Sold: 5 | Calculated stock: 9 | Available: 9 | Calculated stock with open sales orders: 9
For a quick export, select the number of entries and click CSV, Excel, PDF or Print to export the data in the format you want.
Note
For larger exports, you can also use the Reports module or the Xentral API.
An overview of the current stock on a special warehouse can be found in the Warehouse Management > Tab: Overview > Warehouse select > Tab: Stock.
You can select product and storage location in the main filter and group them using the PDF Export. In the table you can filter by shelf (= storage location), product number, product name , project, quantity, availability (= stock including sold products in open sales orders, refers to the total product stock) and reserved product quantity.
Reservations can be made for individual large sales orders or the entire goods, so you can control whether you want to include all open incoming sales orders in the stocked products or only reserve large B2B deliveries e.g. pallet deliveries or long-term large sales orders in advance.
Reservations can be prioritized directly in the sales order. Click on the action menu at the top right and select reserve all products. The products of this one sasles order will be reserved.
Reservations are displayed in the warehouse tab of each product. You can also delete reservations and reset them if necessary via the sales order.
Note
Caution: If you delete reservations and process automatic logistics processes sales orders, there may be intermediate sales, which the products will be released for a moment when the reservation is deleted.
You can also set reservations automatically system-wide. The auto-shipping process (calculate automatic-shipping) immediately reassigns the reservations (first ordered sales orders are reserved first) if reservations are activated in a project (see project settings, logistics settings).
Note
The reservation is calculated in the quantity of “Available Products” and deducted from the stock count for the shop, i.e. if you have 10 products in stock and 2 of them are already reserved in a sales order, 8 products will be reported back to your shop.
You can view your current stock value in the Stock Calculation tab. This function allows you to estimate stock value for information purposes without inventory.
Note
Before using the stock calculation, make sure you have the tax regulations that apply to your business by contacting your local tax office or the tax office/tax authority.This calculation does not replace a proper inventory.
Tip
The values and prices maintained in the product are stored per day via an automatic process and displayed in this table, provided that the process tarter “stock value” is activated (the values are stored at 0:00).
Select one of the following options from the Price dropdown menu if needed to display additional information in the overview:
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Last purchase price live (with current value): Displays stock levels as of the selected date with current purchase prices.
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Calculated purchase price live (with current value): Displays stock levels as of the selected date with currently calculated purchase prices.
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Inventory value live (with current value): Displays stock levels as of the selected date with current inventory values.
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Last purchase price (archive only): Displays stock levels as of the selected date with the last recorded purchase prices from the archive.
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Calculated purchase price (archive only): Displays stock levels as of the selected date with previously calculated purchase prices.
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Inventory value (archive only): Displays stock levels as of the selected date with past inventory values.
Note
If a user can’t see the inventory value in the warehouse management, it’s almost always due to a missing permission. In that case, the user needs to be granted the “Warehouse > value” right. You can configure this in the user account under the “Permissions” tab. Once assigned, the inventory value will be visible in the warehouse management. If you want to navigate there directly, use: module=lager&action=wert.
E.g. for simple storage setup: room + shelf1. Storage location: warehouse1 2. Storage: S1001, S1002, S1003, ...
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S1001: S1 = Storage1
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S1001: 001 = Storage 001 oder compartment 001
For example, for average warehouse structure: room + shelf + compartment (+ compartment division)1. Storage location: warehouse2 2. Storage: S211A01, S211A02, S211A03, ..., S216Z01, S216Z02, ...
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S211A25: L2 = Storage2
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S211A25: 11 = Storage 11 or compartment 11
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S211A25: A25 = compartment A25 or compartment A, open-sided storage box 25
E.g. for more complex warehouse structure: room + room division + shelf + compartment (+ compartment division)1. Storage room: warehouse3 2. Storage shelves: S30AA01 - S300AA0n, ...S30AB01 - S30AB0n ..., S30ZZ01 - S30ZZmn
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S31AA01: L31 = Storage3, 1st row or S31 = Storage3, right and S32 = storage 3, left
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S31AA01: AA = shelf A, compartment A
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L31AA01: 01= Division 01
For example for distributed warehouse setup: Branch office + room + shelf + compartment (+ compartment division)1. Storage room: Warehouse Berlin 2. Storage shelves: WB2AB01, ..., WB2ZZ99
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WB2AB01 = Warehouse Berlin
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WB = Storage2
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WB2AB01 = Shelf A
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WB2AB01 = compartment B01 or compartment B and compartment division 01