Locations

What is it and what is it for?

Each Location is a simple record (name, code and contact details) that you later select on your purchasing, sales, inventory, payroll, fixed assets, project and other transactions, to identify the physical place where the movement happened or where the stock is. It's the same information shown to the user as a "warehouse" or "branch" depending on the context.

• You can organize them in a hierarchy of up to three levels (for example, a branch with several warehouses inside it), by assigning a Parent Location.
• A Location can be marked as a consignment warehouse, linked to a specific customer, to track merchandise that is physically in that customer's possession but still belongs to you.
• You can hide it from the Customer Portal if you don't want your customers to see it while tracking their orders.
• If you use Inventory Bins, you can assign each Location a default picking bin, which is suggested first when dispatching merchandise from it.

How to use this screen

1. Browse the list. Open Locations from Inventory to see the full catalog, with its hierarchical name (including its parents' names), whether it's inactive, and the subsidiary it belongs to.
2. Create a new Location. Use the New button and enter at least the Name. Optionally assign a Code, a Parent Location to place it inside a hierarchy, the Subsidiary it belongs to (if your company uses them) and its address and contact details.
3. Configure extra fields. If you need to capture information specific to your business that AdmCloud doesn't offer natively, add a Custom Field using the Create Field button (Enterprise edition).
4. Assign users. On Enterprise-edition companies, you can mark which users are allowed to transact at each Location from the form's Users section.
5. Save the document. Using the Save button.
6. Review the detail. From there you can edit the Location, delete it (if it has no dependent records) and, on the Enterprise edition, configure its own document numbering.
7. Check the hierarchical view. The list's Hierarchical View button (Enterprise edition) shows a visual diagram of how all your Locations nest together. The chart is interactive: you can search, expand or collapse branches, zoom in and out, switch between vertical and horizontal, and print it.

Main capabilities

• A hierarchy of up to three levels between Locations, via the Parent Location.
• A link to a Subsidiary, if your company uses more than one.
• An "Available for Sales" flag, to control which Locations can be sold from.
• Consignment Locations, linked to a customer, for inventory held by third parties.
• Hiding a Location from the Customer Portal.
• A default picking bin, if you use Inventory Bins.
• Custom Fields on the form (Enterprise edition).
• Assigning which users are authorized to transact per Location (Enterprise edition).
• Independent document numbering per Location (Enterprise edition).
• A diagram-style hierarchical view of all your Locations (Enterprise edition).

Key fields

Validations on save

• Name is required.
• The same Name cannot repeat under the same Parent Location. You can reuse a name across different hierarchies.
• A Location cannot be its own Parent Location.
• The Parent Location must exist. AdmCloud rejects the document if it points to a Parent Location that doesn't exist.
• The Parent Location must belong to the same Subsidiary (unless the Parent Location has no subsidiary assigned).
• No cycles are allowed: you cannot make a Location the parent of another Location that is already one of its own ancestors.
• Only up to three hierarchy levels are allowed. AdmCloud rejects the document if saving it would create a fourth level.
• The Consignment Customer cannot be changed if that Location already has consignment Sales Orders recorded under the current customer.
• The number of active Locations is limited by your plan. When creating or editing, AdmCloud warns you if you've already reached your edition's Location limit.

Deleting a Location

A Location cannot be deleted if it has dependent records, including:

• Inventory Bins created inside it.
• Transactions from any module (sales, purchasing, inventory, payroll, accounting) recorded at that Location.
• Items with stock or setup linked to that Location.
• Budgets, Fixed Assets, Projects, web stores or maintenance plans assigned to that Location.
• Child Locations that still depend on it as their Parent Location.
• Users, User Groups or Preferences that have it configured as their default Location.
• Transportation routes or rates that use it as an origin.
• Allocation (accounting distribution) rules that include it.

In any of these cases, AdmCloud shows you the list of records still using it, so you can reassign or remove them before trying again.

Availability and plans

Locations are available from the Start plan and above; the Billing (Invoices) plan does not include this feature. How many Locations you can create depends on your plan: 1 on Start, 2 on Basic, up to 10 on Standard and Premium, up to 100 on Premium Plus (and its Payroll, CRM or E-commerce variants), and unlimited on the Enterprise edition.

A few features on this screen are exclusive to the Enterprise edition (and, where applicable, also require the matching module to be active among your account's enabled modules): the diagram-style hierarchical view, assigning which users are authorized per Location, independent document numbering per Location, and Custom Fields on the form. The default picking bin also requires Inventory Bins, available with the Advanced Inventory module.

Access is controlled with the "Locations" permission on the user group: the browse level is needed to view the list and detail, the add level to create new Locations, the edit level to modify them, and the delete (full) level to remove them.

Tips and common mistakes