Imagine a typical situation in retail: a large batch of goods arrives at your central warehouse or main store and needs to be promptly distributed across the entire network of retail outlets.
The goods receipt distribution mode is designed specifically to automate this process and eliminate the need to create dozens of separate internal transfers manually. You can distribute the product range directly from the goods receipt invoice.
Business owners usually have the following questions:
"How can I distribute goods immediately upon receipt so that I do not have to move them twice?",
"How should I account for goods that have already been dispatched but have not yet arrived at the retail outlet (deferred invoices)?",
"Why does the software sometimes display incorrect stock balances at the dispatching warehouse during distribution?",
"Why can retail prices disappear when the quantity is changed?", and
"How can I print labels with the correct prices for a specific recipient store?".
Below, we will examine the goods receipt distribution process in detail and answer all these practical questions.
How the goods receipt distribution mechanism works
The process begins directly during or after the goods are received. The Document - Goods Receipt form contains the «Distribute goods among retail outlets» button. Clicking it opens a special form that displays the complete list of goods from the current invoice.
To avoid unnecessary actions, you can configure the type of documents that the software will create automatically after the distribution is completed:
-
Create internal transfers — the standard option, in which internal transfer invoices are created from the dispatching warehouse to the recipient warehouses.
-
Create goods receipt invoices — an alternative option in which new goods receipt invoices are automatically created at the accounting centers to which the goods are transferred.
If you receive several deliveries during the day and distribute them immediately, it is convenient to enable the «Create one invoice per day for each retail outlet» setting. The system will then avoid creating numerous small documents and will accumulate all distributed goods in a single internal transfer invoice for each store.
For situations where you need to quickly transfer only one item that has just been scanned, so that the product is handled only once, there is a separate action — «Distribute 1 product among retail outlets», which opens the distribution dialog only for the current item.
Working with deferred invoices and the "Goods in Transit" warehouse
When goods have physically left the central warehouse but are still in the carrier's vehicle, they cannot be considered available for sale either at the dispatching warehouse or at the recipient location. To account for such situations correctly, the distribution settings include special parameters:
-
Create invoices as deferred — the document is created but does not affect stock balances until it is posted.
-
Create invoices for the "Goods in Transit" warehouse — the goods are transferred to a virtual transit warehouse. The recipient store can see which goods are on the way in the Warehouse - Goods in Transit mode and accept the invoice once the goods are physically received.
How can you avoid confusion with stock balances?
One of the most common questions business owners ask is how the software determines the actual quantity of goods available for distribution when part of the product range remains in deferred documents. For this purpose, the «Include goods in deferred invoices and in Goods in Transit warehouses» setting was developed. In the Deferred Invoice Accounting Parameters form, you can flexibly select which documents, such as inactive goods receipts, deferred transfers, or unaccepted goods in transit, the software should subtract from or add to the total quantity so that you see only the stock that can actually be dispatched at the moment.
Calculating demand and resolving calculation errors
To avoid specifying the quantity for each store manually, the distribution form includes the «Calculate» action. The software can automatically fill in the receipt columns using the following formula: (<Sales quantity> + <Minimum stock> - <Quantity in stock>). If the quantity of goods at the central warehouse is lower than the total demand of all retail outlets, the system will distribute it proportionally, giving priority to the store with the greater demand.
Why do errors sometimes occur when calculating demand and stock balances? Business owners sometimes encounter situations where, with the "Include goods in deferred invoices..." option enabled, the stock balance column displays incorrect figures. Torgsoft specialists identified and resolved several specific causes:
-
Impact of control points. Previously, the system could mistakenly include automatic hidden goods receipt invoices from control points of closed periods, artificially increasing the figures at the dispatching warehouse.
-
Adjustment invoices in transit. There were situations where adjustment invoices for the "Goods in Transit" warehouse incorrectly affected the calculation of the available quantity of goods.
-
The product was added to transit for the first time. If a product was transferred to the "Goods in Transit" warehouse but had never previously existed in the product range of the recipient's main warehouse, the software could fail to include it during distribution. This logical error in the algorithm has been corrected.
Answers to frequently asked questions from business owners (FAQ)
Why do retail prices disappear when the product quantity is changed during distribution?
Business owners often noticed that when the quantity of units was adjusted manually in the goods receipt form, the retail price, and sometimes the cost price, could be reset or disappear, requiring the data to be entered again. This is related to recalculating the parameters of the document row. To avoid this, make sure you are using the current version of the software, in which the multi-row price entry mode has been optimized. It is also advisable to first finalize the distribution quantities and then apply pricing to multiple items.
How can labels for stores be printed correctly directly from the distribution form?
You can print barcodes for all stores at once by selecting Print product labels -> Print labels for all accounting centers.
An important detail: previously, an error caused the purchase price to be printed on the label instead of the retail price when the "Create goods receipt invoices" distribution type was selected. The algorithm has now been corrected, and the software correctly uses the retail price of the accounting center to which the goods are actually being transferred.
What should you do if the distribution window takes a long time to load?
If you have a very large database, for example, more than 15,000-40,000 product items in a document, the form may operate slowly. To speed up the process, the developers added the ability to minimize the distribution form and significantly optimized the mode itself: adding data now takes only a few seconds. If the form still takes a long time to open, it is recommended to perform the Restore and Reorganize Indexes and Update Statistics service action in the software settings. You should also avoid adding all warehouse goods to the distribution if you are delivering only a specific batch.
Go back to the previous step