One or more warehouses?

One or more warehouses and one or more locations

A warehouse is normally created for each physical location, such as a building or a physically separate store. The purpose of this is to ensure that employees can only pick items from their own location for sales orders or POS sales – and thereby avoid errors in inventory. You can, however, grant employees permissions to view stock levels at other locations.

Example:
A store in Skagen should not be able to pick items from a store in Aalborg. Likewise, a field mechanic on the road can only pick items from their own vehicle.
If an item is missing in Aalborg but is in stock in Skagen, it can be moved via an internal transfer. We normally create one warehouse per physical location and at least one warehouse per CVR number. Two different CVR numbers should not share a warehouse.

Dividing a warehouse into locations

A warehouse can be further divided into locations. There are two ways to use locations:

1. As stock locations:
   A subdivision of the physical warehouse, such as shelves. There will always be a default location, which organizationally has the same name as the warehouse, e.g. "store".

2. Solely as product locations:
   For example, as information on the product card. Here the warehouse is not physically subdivided into locations. The information is only stored on the product card and indicates where the item should be found. For example: the item should be available on shelf x, but Sapera does not register this physically, as no counting is done per location in this case.

For both options, when items are received via purchase invoice, stock journal or receipt, you can specify which location the items should be placed in:

• As stock locations:
  Stock increases are created at the specific location, and Sapera
  registers how many items are at each location. The product card is also updated with information about the location.

• Solely as product locations:
  The increase is created at the default location, and the product card is updated with the information. In this case, Sapera does not register the exact quantity per location. This means you do not need to worry about location during stock counting, only about the total quantity. The disadvantage is that Sapera cannot show how many items are at the individual locations. If you have more than one warehouse, the system can still show how many items are at each warehouse.

It is optional whether you want to divide the warehouse into locations. This function can be activated in Sapera

Benefits of dividing a warehouse into locations

If you choose to divide the warehouse into locations, you gain the following benefits:

• Precise knowledge of where a given item is located, e.g. on which shelf, as well as how many are available.

• In the sales process, you can configure how items should be picked:

  • Stock locations can be assigned a priority, so the item is automatically picked from the
    location with the highest priority.

  • If the item is not found at any prioritized location, it is picked from the
    default location.

  • Alternatively, Sapera can ask the user which location the item should be picked from.

Disadvantage:
Stock counting must be carried out per location, which can entail extra work.

Note the difference:
A sales order can only contain items from one warehouse, but it can contain items from different locations within the same warehouse.

Without dividing the warehouse into locations

If you choose to have one combined warehouse without dividing it into locations:

• During stock counting, everything is counted together. For example:
  If you have 2 units of item x in building A and 2 units of item x in building B, you must register 4 units in the stock count journal for item x.
  The disadvantage is that you cannot count per building.

• Sapera can only show the total number of items in the warehouse, not where they are specifically located.

It is, however, possible to specify a location as information on the product card, so you can see where the item should be located. When receiving items, you can choose whether the location on the product card should be updated. This does not affect stock counting, however – it is for information only.

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