Warehouse structure (Xentral Warehouse Management)

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.

You have a small manageable warehouse

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:

• You name your warehouse “main warehouse”

• 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 a larger warehouse and many places or multiple locations

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.

• You name your warehouse “main warehouse”, “Augsburg”, “Munich”

• 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):

• You name your warehouse “warehouse3”

• 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

Steps:

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:

Steps for CSV import:

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:

Steps to download/print a single label for a storage location:

Steps to download/print all labels for a warehouse:

Steps to download/print all labels for a storage location:

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.

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.

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.

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:

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:

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 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.

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 > 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.

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.

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.

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.

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).

You can get the inventory done with the inventory app and control it via the inventory module.

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.

E.g. for simple storage setup: room + shelf1. Storage location: warehouse1 2. Storage: S1001, S1002, S1003, ...

For example, for average warehouse structure: room + shelf + compartment (+ compartment division)1. Storage location: warehouse2 2. Storage: S211A01, S211A02, S211A03, ..., S216Z01, S216Z02, ...

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

For example for distributed warehouse setup: Branch office + room + shelf + compartment (+ compartment division)1. Storage room: Warehouse Berlin 2. Storage shelves: WB2AB01, ..., WB2ZZ99

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: