Warehouses & Locations

A location is a place where you hold stock: a warehouse, a store, a stockroom, or a van. It is an independent master file: each location has a name and, optionally, a parent location, so you can nest a set of storage areas under a warehouse and a set of warehouses under a region. The bookkeeper or accountant sets locations up once, and everyone selects from the list wherever a document needs to know where goods sit.

A location is one of ZyncLedger's organizational dimensions, alongside Branches and Sales Reps. Unlike a branch, it is not just a reporting label. It drives real inventory behaviour, so it is worth setting up deliberately:

• Stock is counted per location. ZyncLedger keeps each product's on-hand quantity per location, valued at the product's one moving average cost. The same item can show 40 units in your main warehouse and 5 in a shop.
• Transactions carry a location. Quotations, sales orders, invoices, delivery orders, invoice credits, purchase orders, GRNs, GRN credits, bills, bill credits, bank payments, bank receipts, fund transfers, journals, inventory adjustments, issue notes, and issue returns have a Location field on the header. Most of them also have a Location column on the lines, which starts from the header's location and can be changed line by line. The location on a stock line is what tells ZyncLedger which location's stock to raise or reduce. A Stock Transfer has a From Location and a To Location, and a Stock Request Note has a To Location. These fields come from the form's template, so your template can rename or hide them. If you set a Default Location under Settings → Defaults, it prefills the field on new documents.
• Reports group and filter by location. Inventory reports such as Inventory Balance Summary (Location Columns) and Inventory Movement Summary by Location show stock location by location, and the Sales by Location and Purchase by Location reports total your trading per location. On the Profit & Loss and the Balance Sheet you can add a column per location (choose Header Location under Column by; the Profit & Loss also offers Detail Location, which uses the location on each line), and you can filter reports to a single location. If you use the Planning & Budgeting app (installed under Apps → Apps, see Budgets) and split a budget by location, Budget vs Actual can show a column per location too.
• Numbering can be split by location. You can give each location its own document number series, so every shop's invoices run in their own sequence. See Document numbering.

A location can also be set as a sales rep's Default Location, which decides the stock the rep sees and where the Zync Rep app files the rep's documents. See Sales Reps.

Before you start

Every new business starts with one location named Main, already active and approved, so you can begin trading immediately. Add more locations only when you actually store or sell stock in more than one place.

Access is controlled by the Locations permissions in your user's permission profile, under Administration → Permissions (see Users, seats & permissions). There are separate switches to list, create, edit, delete, and approve locations. You need the list permission to open the Locations screen.

Create a location

1. Open the Locations list

   Go to Lists → Locations. The table shows each Location, its Parent, its Status (Active or Inactive, and Approved or Pending), and Created By, with child locations nested under their parent. You can search by location name.

2. Start a new location

   Select Add Location. The Create New Location panel opens from the right.

3. Enter the location name

   Type the Location Name (required), for example Kandy Warehouse. Each name must be unique.

4. Choose a parent location (optional)

   Use Parent Location (Optional) to nest this location under a broader one, for example placing Colombo Shop under Western Region. Search for the parent and select it, or leave it blank for a top-level location. Only active, approved locations are offered. A location cannot sit under itself or under one of its own child locations, and a location can be nested at most five levels below a top-level location.

5. Set the status flags

   Two checkboxes control whether the location can be used:

   Field	What it does
   Active	On by default. An inactive location stays for history but is not offered when you pick a location on a document.
   Approved	Off by default. A location is only offered for selection once it is both Active and Approved. Ticking this needs the approve permission. Once a location is saved as approved, the box is locked and cannot be cleared.

6. Save

   Select Create Location. The location appears in the list and, once approved, in the Location dropdown on stock and transaction screens.

You can also add a location without leaving a transaction: open the Location dropdown and select Add Location. The same panel opens, and the new location is selected on the transaction straight away if you saved it as both Active and Approved.

Import or export the list

The list also has Export and Import. Export downloads the locations currently shown in the list, with the visible columns, as a CSV file. Import needs both the create and edit permissions. It loads locations from a CSV file: you match its columns to Location Name, Parent Location Name, Active Status, and Approved Status, and choose whether to skip or update locations whose name already exists. Location Name is required on every row. A parent is matched by its location name, so list a parent above its children in the file.

Edit, deactivate, or delete

Select the edit icon on any row to rename a location, change its parent, or change its flags, then select Update Location. Renaming a location changes the name shown on every document that carries it, past and future. To stop a location being used without losing its history, clear its Active flag rather than deleting it.

Related

• Products & Items — the items whose stock is held at each location.
• Stock Transfer — move stock from one location to another.
• Branches — the organizational dimension for reporting, and how a branch differs from a location.
• Sales Reps — give a rep a default location.
• Document numbering — split a document type into a separate number series per location.
• Budget vs Actual — compare a budget split by location with the ledger, a column per location.
• Users, seats & permissions — where the Locations permissions are granted.