Reserve goods from several warehouses

In retail, especially when offline stores and online sales are combined, entrepreneurs regularly face the problem of order consolidation. A customer may order several products that are physically located in different warehouses or retail locations of the network. 

Entrepreneurs often ask: «How can I sell a product that is located in another store?», «Why do automatic internal transfers appear during reservation and confuse stock balances?», or «How can I correctly assemble one order from different accounting centers so that the same product is not sold twice?». 

A multi-warehouse order and reservation is a mechanism in the Torgsoft program that allows you to collect products from any available accounting centers in one document (invoice), reserve them from accidental sale, and control the logistics of their shipment to the customer.

Main settings for working with several warehouses

In order for a manager to add products that are actually located in different accounting centers (AC) to one order, it is necessary to properly configure access rights and program parameters.

The main setting is located in the Settings - Parameters - Document menu. There you need to enable the switches «Allow sales from all retail locations in the "Sale" form» and «Allow sales from all retail locations in the "Trade with invoice" form». If this switch is enabled, then when adding the same product that is available in several accounting centers, the program will ask the user from which warehouse the product being sold or reserved should be written off.

If the «Allow sales from all retail locations» access is disabled, the user will not be able to select products from other warehouses. This is done to exclude unnecessary and uncontrolled movements of goods from warehouses and reserve warehouses by employees who do not have the authority to do so. In addition, users must be granted access to the accounting centers they will work with.

Working with online orders (multi-warehouse distribution)

The issue of several warehouses becomes especially important when processing orders from an online store or marketplaces. To automate this process, special settings are provided in the synchronization object:

• Offer selection of the invoice accounting center — when issuing an invoice from «Remote Customer Order», the program will allow you to select an AC for the document.

• Offer products from other warehouses — a special «Distribution of remote customer order products» form will be displayed, where you can distribute which product should be taken from which warehouse.

• Only if there is not enough product in the warehouse — the distribution form between warehouses will appear only when at least one product from the order is missing in the manager's current warehouse.

In the distribution form, the quantity of goods to be written off from the warehouses where they are available will be filled in automatically, but if necessary, the quantity can be adjusted manually.

Algorithm for reserving products from different warehouses

The main tool for managing multi-warehouse orders is the «Document - Trade with invoice» mode.

There are two conceptual options for reserving products in the system:

1. With transfer to a temporary storage warehouse (3rd level). During reservation, the product is physically and nominally removed from the main warehouse and transferred to a specially created «Goods under pledge warehouse» or reserve warehouse. At the same time, the program automatically creates internal transfer invoices to this warehouse. Such a product will not participate in inventories of the main warehouse because it is no longer there.

2. Without transfer. The product remains in the main store warehouse but is reserved nominally. It is available for regular sale to other customers, but to avoid losing it, you need to use reports on ordered goods.

Availability control and reserve management

To control a multi-warehouse order, the Trade with invoice mode has a «Product availability in warehouses» tab. It is convenient to use it to track which product is already ready for shipment and which one still needs to arrive.

If a product is unavailable in the warehouses (zero or negative quantity), it is highlighted in red. The following columns are used to clearly understand the order situation:

• «In reserve» — shows the quantity of goods that is already in reserve for this specific invoice.

• «Order» — shows the quantity of goods that is missing. For example, if a customer ordered 1 item, it was found in the warehouse and reserved, then the «In reserve» column will show 1, and the «Order» column will show 0.

Partial shipment and removal from reserve

Quite often, goods from several warehouses arrive at different times, and the order is shipped to the customer in parts. 

In addition, for convenient work with partial shipments, the «Product availability in warehouses» tab does not disappear after the first goods issue invoice is created, which allows the manager to see how much has already been shipped and how much still needs to be transferred to the customer.

After the goods issue invoice is created and the product is fully shipped, it is automatically removed from reserve. If the product was removed from reserve manually before shipment, it is automatically moved back to the main warehouse, and the corresponding automatic internal transfer documents are deleted.

For large-scale networks where goods are issued not at the place where the order is created (for example, a seller in the sales area issues an invoice, and a warehouse worker from a remote warehouse gives the goods to the customer), it is also recommended to use the «Shipment from warehouse» mode for clear control of the movement of goods and materials.