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Step 14 - Define warehouse structure

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Table of Contents

You use the warehouse structure to set warehouses and storage places in xentral. You then store the products in these.

Fulfillment > warehouse management

Note: Until version 21.1, the menu item Fulfillment was called Inventory.

Pro and con inventory management

The following is about why or why not you should make use of warehousing. 

Contra warehousing

You don't need to keep inventory if you don't want to record inventory quantities, since e.g. only few articles are present, and an overview prevails. In this case it is nevertheless advisable to create at least one main warehouse with a shelf place.

Pro warehousing

The argument in favor of warehousing is that there are items for which the stock quantities should be tracked. In the item details, for these items, you check the option Stock item to activate their stock management. Only then can you enter stocks for this article.

Stock item management

You have two different ways to manage your stock items. You either store them in one storage place or in different ones.

Storage in one storage place

Putting away in a single storage place makes sense if the warehouse is not large and you don't need a storage subdivision. 

Storage in different storage places

Putting stock items into storage in different storage places is the same as dividing the warehouse into different storage placess. This is the case when one storage place is not enough and becomes unmanageable. If necessary even different warehouses are meaningful with spatial separation, thus e.g. different floors, buildings or equal to an external warehouse.

Creating warehouses and shelves

The following section shows you how to create warehouses and shelves in xentral. 

A warehouse in xentral basically always consists of 2 levels:

  1. Storage: name for the location, room, floor, etc
  2. Shelf: designation for shelf, compartment, visible box, etc. → Actual storage location, which is queried during storage/retrieval is queried in xentral

In most cases, there is, for example, a main warehouse in which shelves form the individual warehouse structure.

Create warehouse

You create a new warehouse under Fulfillment > Warehouse Management > +NEW:


The following fields are to be filled:

  • Inventory: Enter the storage name here
  • Project: Enter a project manually or select via the magnifying glass icon to select a previously created project from the list. This entry is optional, you can also leave it empty
  • Address: Enter an address manually or select a pre-created one via the magnifying glass icon to select a previously created address from the list. This entry is optional, you can also leave it empty

Finally click on Save. 

Create shelf

After that, you can add the individual storage places in the tab Shelves > Create new shelf:


Only the name here is a mandatory field. You can only use letters and numbers. Special characters and especially spaces do not work.
Storage types are left empty by default, unless an option applies to the Shelf space.
The special shelf types will be described here.
The storage properties are optional and are for informational purposes only. These values are not evaluated in xentral.

Build warehouse structure

By naming the storage locations (shelves), you can build up any storage structure you like. 

Case study of a standard warehouse structure:
Room + shelf + compartment + visible storage box

  • HL0101A
  • HL0101B
  • HL0101C
  • …
  • HL0102A
  • HL0102B
  • …
  • HL0233A
  • HL0233B

Explanation of designation:

  • HL: Room: should it be several rooms, is immediately evident, in which room the article is stored
  • 0101: Shelf and compartments: the first 2-digit number stands for the shelf, the last two digits for the compartment
  • A: Compartment division: e.g. in each case a separate visible storage box. or an ESD box with several compartment subdivisions

More examples of a useful warehouse designation can be found in our Manual. 

Storage labels

If you use storage labels you must make sure that they contain the name of the storage place and not the storage place ID. In xentral you can only scan storage places by name.   

 

Here is the way to Step 15 - Import addresses