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.
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Set a structure for the warehouse
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Activate and set up a warehouse
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Import storage locations
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Storage, retrieval and relocation of products
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Reservations
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Stocks, stock calculation
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Inventory
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.
Your distribution channel, for example the online shop in Berlin, accesses your entire “warehouse”, not individual “shelves”.
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.
Note
Think about how exactly you want to map your warehouse today and what that means in your daily workflow. Do you want to store and monitor all parts or consumables? Or are the sales products enough? Do you want to book out small parts individually for a production or do you keep parts of the inventory differently?
Think about what your necessary requirements are today and also in the next 12 months. Your warehouse structure should be pragmatic, but today you certainly don't want to have to change everything in a few months.
The answers to these questions will of course depend on what your product range looks like, whether you buy or produce yourself, whether you pack in-house or have a fulfiller, how big your team is and your company (because other regulations also apply here).
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 warehouse.
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.
Creating a new warehouse
Steps:
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Go to Stock > Warehouse Management and click +NEW.
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Assign a name for the new warehouse in the format: A word without special characters e.g. main warehouse, production warehouse, hall, warehouse Berlin, etc..
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Click Save.
Caution
You can also assign a warehouse to a project or address to get restrictions in processes later.
I.e. you should only give this information if they want these restrictions active in the system.
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Project: A project restricts the warehouse to one business unit (project warehouse).
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Address: The specification of an address is necessary for a commission warehouse, external production or address or country from the warehouse.
After saving, you will be given the editing mode to add more areas - the shelves - to your newly created warehouse.
Steps:
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Go to Storage Locations and click on Create new storage locations.
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Give your storage location (=shelf) a name from contiguous characters/digits e.g. MW001, MW0101A etc.
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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.
Steps for quick storage location creation:
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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.
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Click Create Storage Locations. The storage locations will be added.
Note
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Specify storage locations separated by a comma or between them per line.
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If you accidentally created a storage location, it will not be added again.
Steps for CSV import:
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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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Upload your CSV file with the following columns: Storage Location; Order.
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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.
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
Steps to download/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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Go to 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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Go to the warehouse management and then 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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Go to the warehouse management and then the Warehouse Labels tab.
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Select a storage location as the starting value via warehouse shelf (from) and a warehouse shelf as the final value warehouse shelf (to).
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Click Print to get the labels as PDF.
Assign a type to warehouses - replenishment warehouses, consumption warehouses, quarantine warehouses, production warehouses
You can assign a type to warehouses and specify what purpose it will be used for.
Note
If you do not assign a specific type of warehouse, the warehouse will be used normally for all operations and displayed in user interfaces.
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Replenishment warehouses are not used by logistics but are displayed as inventory on the order.You can manually change replenishment to logistics warehouses at any time and always have your safety stock in stock.
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Consumption warehouses can be used to check out products with a history.
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Quarantine warehouses are not used by logistics and are not displayed in stocks.
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Production warehouse is an option for the Production module.
Assign storage type to steps:
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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 and click the pen icon in a storage location.
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Select the storage type (e.g. replenishment storage).
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Click on Save.
A replenishment warehouse is provided for products that you will only need soon. Orders for logistics do not come from this warehouse. The replenishment warehouse is a type of “quarantine warehouse” 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 warehouse 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 warehouses to the type of replenishment warehouse, e.g. RW001.
Note
The replenishment warehouse will not be suggested for sales orders and production. 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 warehouse, the purchase order inventory light is displayed orange. For the purchase order suggestion, the goods on a replenishment warehouse 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 warehouse . Stocks are not kept in this warehouse, but all products are listed as booking history. The stock can be used for example for "consumption" or "scrapping".
If you want to stock in products but they are not allowed to be used for logistics, you can use the type quarantine warehouse (= non automatic shipping warehouse). The warehouse 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 warehouse. 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 warehouse 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.
For sales orders and delivery notes in this project, products may only be stocked out from the warehouse that has been uniquely assigned to the project. The sales order light will thus remain red if there is not a sufficient quantity of products in the sales order on the project warehouse. Similarly, sales orders from other projects may not access the warehouse (bidirectional relationship). Note: The ‘Preferred warehouse’ field may not be filled if this setting is enabled.
To create a project warehouse, follow these steps:
Steps project warehouse:
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Select a warehouse under Warehouse Management and assign it to a project.
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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.
The automatic shipment will be taken from these warehouses. If there are any products left in other warehouses (not part of the project), they will not be used. The sales order light will switch to "orange" in this case.
A project or x projects take from exactly one warehouse. The following settings are necessary for this use:
Sales orders and delivery notes in this project are retrieved from this warehouse. If there is insufficient stock on the Preferred Warehouse, the sales order light turns orange. Other projects may also retrieve from this warehouse (unidirectional relationship). Note: This option stings the project warehouse hooks above it.
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 .
The automatic shipping uses this warehouse. The others are not used. The project warehouse is added in the sales order when the new sales order is created.
If a project should be automatically added, a commission/consignment warehouse can be set (see commission warehouse ), which can be found under Contacts> Edit Address (pen icon) > Terms of Payment /taxation .
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.
You can view an overview of the current stock for special products in the tab Stock in edit mode in an product.
Note
For more information on individual product stocks, reservations and calculations, as well as product in open sales orders and productions, please refer to the description of product.
You can view the sales history of your products (= warehouse movements) in Xentral at the product level, in a warehouse bundled by its warehouse locations or in an overall overview of all warehouses.
You can view an overview of the total current warehouse movements in the warehouse management in the movements tab. You can select warehouse, storage location and product in the main filter. In the table you can filter by product number, product name, warehouse, storage location (= shelf), incoming/outgoing, quantity, date, reference, processor and project.
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.
An overview of the current stock on a special warehouse can be found in the Warehouse Management > Tab: Overview > Stock Select > Tab: Movements.
You can select the product and storage location in the main filter. In the table you can filter by shelf (= storage location), product number, product name, incoming/outgoing, quantity, date and reference.
It is possible to control warehouses via the Rights assignments project. This means that you can restrict warehouses to projects if you have a store-sale location that is separate from the main business, for example. Here you can book the warehouse on a project and make it available to your employees in this standard only to this project.
Employee projects are actively evaluated for warehouse management. This means that employees only see the warehouses for which they also have the employee role. If you want an employee to be able to see all warehouses, you can reassign the employee role under Contacts > Roles, leaving the Project field blank. The employee will then receive the project assignment ALL and thus be allowed to see all warehouses.
Note
If warehouses are assigned to specific projects based on user rights assignment, this can also affect processes (e.g. storage, retrieval, relocation, reservation). The assignment from warehouse to projects should be based on logistics processes, not on rights distribution.
For more information, see above: Project Warehouse and Preferred Warehouse.
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.
Tip: You can also serve key customers through a separate warehouse or replenishment warehouse to make sure that the goods are really handled separately and can never be booked by your other channels.
You can view all reservations for in Warehousing & Logistics > Reservations, where you can also delete reservations.
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.
For more information on calculating stocks, see the article on reservations, shops and logistics.
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).
You can get the inventory done with the inventory app and control it via the inventory module.
Note
The inventory calculation determines the current status/stock value and does not replace the proper inventory.
The total stock value can be seen in the infobox above, which is calculated based on the last entered purchase price, inventory value and calculated EK price.
The value based on the last entered price can also be read directly per shelf. The search option can be used to restrict the value to one warehouse/shelf. Furthermore, you can also filter by date, product and product category and group products of the same warehouse.
It is possible to use the process starter storage value (background process) to regularly record the stock for all stock products per day and to view it under the tab Stock calculation.
The data of the following prices can be loaded into the live table via the drop-down menu:
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last purchase (live) : the stocks of the selected date are displayed with the current purchasing prices
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calculated purchase (live) : the stocks of the selected date are displayed with the currently calculated purchasing prices
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Inventory value (live) : shows the stocks of the selected date with the current inventory values
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last purchase (archive only) : the stocks of the selected date are displayed with the purchasing prices at that time
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calculated purchase (archive only) : the stocks of the selected date are displayed with the calculated purchasing prices at that time
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Inventory value (archive only) : the stocks of the selected date are displayed with the inventory values at that time
Note
The process starter must be running for this. This is enabled by default.
Danach kann man über die vorgegebenen Filter das Datum, einen Artikel oder eine Artikelkategorie auswählen sowie die Lagerbestände für ein Lager kumuliert darstellen.
Note
The storing products option does not allow scanning for the storage location ID. Instead, the storage locations are to be scanned for the storage location name. In the Quick Store option, on the other hand, you can search or scan for both the storage location ID and the storage location name.
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
Warehouses and their associated shelves can be labeled with a barcode label, using the label Storage small, which can be stored/defined in the system settings: Administration > Settings > System > Labels > +NEW
If you want to print labels for the labeling of the warehouse, there are two options. On the one hand, all labels for a warehouse can be printed, i.e. one label for each shelf associated with that warehouse. To do this, in the Overview pane, under Warehouse Management, click on the label in the row of the corresponding warehouse. On the other hand, individual labels for specific shelves can also be printed. To do this, in the Overview pane, under Warehouse Management, click on the pen icon, then on the corresponding shelf and on the label icon.
The label printer can be used to print warehouse labels:
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Name of the warehouse barcode (contains the internal storage location ID). The barcode label should contain the storage location name
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Warehouses can be operated with barcode scanner or manually