Warehouses | Warehouse management

Overview

A warehouse is any place that holds your stock: your own warehouse, a shop or a third-party warehouse. Each one has an address, a GSTIN, and settings for whether its stock is sellable and whether O2M runs its floor.

Why use it

Hold and sell stock from several places.
Ship each order from the right warehouse.
Switch a warehouse to full floor management when you are ready.

Before you begin

Your plan allows the number of warehouses you need.

Adding a warehouse

Every company starts with one Default warehouse. Add more in Settings → Stock → Warehouses, up to the number on your plan. The Default warehouse counts as one; inactive or closed warehouses give their place back.

1Click Add warehouse and enter a code (it cannot change later), a name and the kind: own, store or 3PL.
2Enter the address, PIN code, state and GSTIN. The GSTIN appears on tax invoices and decides whether a transfer needs a tax invoice or a delivery challan.
3Optionally enter a map position. Otherwise O2M uses the PIN code to find the nearest warehouse for orders.
4Choose whether its stock is sellable (offered to your channels).
5Save, then link it to channel locations.

Figure 4.2 Step 1 to 4: the warehouse form with code, name, kind, address, PIN code, GSTIN and whether its stock is sellable.

Linking warehouses to channels

Figure 4.3 Settings → Stock → Channel locations: which warehouses feed each channel location.

Open Settings → Stock → Channel locations. Each channel location has a Fed by list: tick the warehouses that supply it. The location is offered the available stock of the ticked warehouses.

A new warehouse feeds no channel until you tick it.
A Shopify or Flipkart location is fed by exactly one warehouse.
Amazon's pooled location may be fed by several warehouses.
A warehouse cannot be unlinked while it holds orders for that channel; ship or move them first.

Switching Warehouse Management mode on

Follow these steps once per warehouse. The screens for each step are shown below.

1Create zones and bins in Locations and bins. Existing stock sits in the warehouse as unassigned (in no bin).
2Put every unassigned unit into a bin: use Put away on Locations and bins, the scanner app's Put away screen, or Put everything unassigned into one bin to start quickly and sort later.
3Make sure the warehouse has a packing or staging bin and a returns bin.
4Switch the warehouse to Warehouse Management on Locations and bins. If something is missing, O2M tells you what.

Step 1: create a zone

Figure 4.4 Locations and bins → Add zone.

Step 2: create bins

Figure 4.5 Locations and bins → Add bins, from a pattern or a list of codes.

Step 3: put unassigned stock into bins and switch on

Figure 4.6 Locations and bins: units not in a bin yet, the bins by purpose, and the Warehouse Management switch.

Step 4 (optional): give items a fixed bin

Figure 4.7 Fixed bins: paste SKU and bin pairs.

Orders already held before the switch finish the old way. New orders go through picklist, packing and manifest.

Switching it off

Switch back to channel mode at any time (you are asked twice). Bins and their contents are kept; open picklists are cancelled, and their orders are dispatched when the channel reports them shipped.

Choosing who works there

Click People on a warehouse and tick the team members who work there. A person limited to some warehouses sees and works only in those.

Deactivating a warehouse

A warehouse can be deactivated once it has no units on hand, incoming or in transit, no open reservations and no open orders. The Default warehouse always stays active.

When your warehouse limit is lowered

Warehouses over the new limit get a closing date five days ahead, shown on the Inventory page. Until then they work normally, and you may close a different warehouse instead. After closing, use Move to Default to move its stock; units held for open orders move with their orders.