Buyer guide
Multi-warehouse inventory software for UK online sellers
One stock number per product works until the same product sits in two places. A seller who fulfils their own website from one site and a marketplace such as B&Q from another has two separate piles of stock, and a single combined figure will oversell one of them while the other has plenty.
What to look for
Software that treats each warehouse as its own count, rather than a note on a single figure, and that connects the counts to what each sales channel is told.
- A separate stock count per warehouse that always adds up to the product total.
- Each sales channel sent the stock of the warehouses it actually ships from - all of them, or a chosen few - rather than one fixed figure.
- Sales taken from the right warehouse, so a sale on one channel does not quietly use up the other site's stock.
- Transfers between warehouses that move stock without changing the total or its cost.
- Deliveries and stock takes recorded against a specific warehouse.
- A way to switch it on without disturbing a business that only has one site.
How TrueSKU does this
The account owner can switch on multiple warehouses in settings. Existing stock is placed in a default warehouse with no change to any quantity, and further warehouses can then be added. By default every channel keeps being sent the total across all warehouses, so adding a warehouse changes nothing on its own. A channel that only ships from some warehouses can be restricted to them, and is then sent their combined stock with buffers and percentage spreads applied. A sale takes stock from the first of the channel's warehouses, in the order you set, that holds enough. See the Multiple Warehouses help guide for the full detail.
Moving stock, receiving and counting
Stock is transferred between warehouses in a single step that cannot take a warehouse below zero. Purchase order deliveries are received into a chosen warehouse, from desktop or a phone, and a stock take counts one warehouse and adjusts only that warehouse. As with all TrueSKU stock takes, counting is point-in-time, so sales continue during the count and counting one warehouse does not hold up another warehouse's sales.
Limits worth knowing about
Warehouses are chosen per channel, not per order. A sale is taken from the first of the channel's warehouses that has enough stock, and TrueSKU does not know which site an individual order really ships from, so a single store that sends some orders from one site and some from another depending on the customer's address is not handled order by order yet. Transfers are instant, with no in-transit stage, and cost layers and reorder levels remain per product rather than per warehouse, so the stock value by warehouse is an approximation. The feature is optional and available on every plan.
For developers
The same controls are available through the API: listing warehouses, a warehouse on any directly set stock figure, receipt or stock take, a per-warehouse breakdown on SKUs, and transfers. See the API reference.
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