With advanced inventory on, the Warehouse section is where the floor is run: one module at a time, each with its own tab, in the shape a warehouse team is used to. The modules are the app's own screens over the same stock records, with the words a warehouse uses: Part, Inventory, Location Group, Location, Transfer Order, Pick, Wave, Pack, Vendor, Purchase Order, Receiving, Bill of Materials, Manufacture Order. Inventory keeps the basic screens; what belongs to the floor is here and nowhere else.
Getting around
- The module menu sits at the far left, in five groups: Materials, Sales, Purchasing, Manufacturing (with the manufacturing layer on) and Setup. Tap the arrow at its top to fold it to its icons.
- Tapping a module opens it as a tab across the top, in front of the others. A tab closes with its ×, and tabs drag to a new order. Each stays as you left it while it is open, so you can go from a pick to the purchase order it waits on and back without losing your place.
- Your tabs, their order, the folded menu and the width of the search pane are remembered for you, on every device you sign in on.
- On a phone the menu opens from the button at the left of the tabs, and a module shows its search first, then the record with a Back button.
The three levels of a place
Stock sits in a Location, which is in a Location Group, which is at a Facility.
- A Facility is one of the business's own buildings: a warehouse, a store, a plant. It is set up in Admin, with every location of the business; the Facility module here lists them with their numbers and prints a label for the door.
- A Location Group is a department or section of a facility: the stockroom, the floor, the receiving dock, a rack row. It can also be a building someone else runs for you: a 3PL, a contract manufacturer, or a customer holding your stock on consignment.
- A Location is a space stock sits in: a shelf, a rack position, a room, a pallet spot. Each has a type (Stock, Receiving, Shipping, Picking, Inspection, Locked, Manufacturing, Store front, Consignment, Vendor), a name, a description, and four functions:
- Active: in use. Off, it is kept with its history and offered nowhere.
- Receivable: deliveries from outside are received into it.
- Available: its stock counts as available to sell and use. Off holds it, as a quarantine shelf.
- Pickable: orders, sales and use take stock from it, and pick lists send people to it.
A new location starts the way its type usually works: a receiving dock is not picked from, a locked cage is held. A location that holds stock cannot be made inactive or moved to another group until the stock is moved out. A warehouse that puts away and picks by scan can lay a location out further in bins under the Zone module; a bin is a scannable spot of its own, with a number too.
Setting up a location group and its locations
- Open Location Group and tap New. Name it, say what it is (a store, a warehouse, a plant, or whose building it is), pick its facility, and save. It is numbered as it is saved.
- On its Locations tab, tap Add a location for one, or Add many to make a run of them from your naming scheme: a run for each part of the name (letters as A-C, numbers as 1-12, or a few as A, C, D), with the type and functions they all start with. The names are shown as you type, and nothing already there is made twice.
- Select locations in the grid (tap one, Shift for a run, Ctrl for one more) and use the rail beside it: Set the type, Set the functions, Print labels, Move up or Move down, Open.
- Open a location to change its name, type, description and functions, to see the stock and tags in it, and its bins.
Numbers, barcodes and labels
Every facility, location group, location and bin has a number of its own, given when it is made and never used again, even after it is removed. A label prints the name large, where it is under that, and a barcode of LOC and the number (a bin's barcode carries its code, which every bin scan already reads, with the number printed beside it).
- Print from a location group (Labels for its locations), from a location, from a facility, or from the rail for whatever is selected, at 4 × 1 or 2 × 1 inches. The label page opens at true size: set the printer to the label's size with no margins, or choose Save as PDF.
- Scan a label into any scan field and the app opens that place: the Location module's search, receiving, a count, putting away. Typing the number does the same where a place is asked for.
The naming scheme
Under Setup, Labels & Numbering, choose how locations are named when many are made at once: a part for each level of a rack (Row, Number, Level), each letters or numbers, with what sits between them. Rack A, position 05, level B reads A.05.B; a business that labels its racks A-05-B or A/05/B picks that instead. Changing the scheme renames nothing already made.
Best practices
- Choose the naming scheme under Setup, Labels & Numbering before making many locations at once, since changing it later renames nothing already made.
- Print and stick a label on every location and bin as soon as it is made, then scan rather than type: a scan opens the right place every time.
- Keep one item to a bin where you can, so a count or a pick never has to sort two things apart.
- Remove a place you no longer use instead of renaming it for something else: its number is never used again, so old labels never point to the wrong place.