Multi-location inventory

Two shops and a warehouse means three numbers for every variant, and a total that only exists when somebody adds it up.

What changes

• A stocktake counts one location at a time
• A reorder point is per location, or you buy for the wrong shelf
• Moving stock is an inventory transfer, not an adjustment at each end
• An order is filled from the first location in your priority list that can fill it

Sixty in total is not sixty available

Ten of a line at each of six shops looks healthy. A customer ordering three gets one shipment from one location, and if no single shop holds three, the order splits or fails.

Availability follows the shelf, not the spreadsheet.

Where it goes wrong

A count is done for the whole business and entered against one location. That location is now sixty over, the other five are short, and the total looks perfect. This is the most common way a multi-location store convinces itself its numbers are fine.

The other one is a transfer recorded as two adjustments. Stock leaves one place, arrives at the other, and there is no record tying the two together when a box goes missing between them.