Main Location, and where your stock actually lands

Play this lesson as slides — one slide per step, with the same narration. The full text of every step is on this page.

This lesson is about one field. Main Location sits on a branch, takes a second to set, and is read by inventory, by the point of sale and by your online store — three modules, which is further than anything else on the branch record reaches. The two ways it goes wrong look nothing like each other. About twelve minutes, and worth doing with a real branch open.

Step 1 — Follow a stock line to the location it lands on

After this step you can say where any stock line will land before you finalise anything. The inventory engine takes the first location that exists on the line: its own delivery location, then its store, then the store on the document header, and last the branch’s main location. Two families add to that. A stock transfer also writes a mirrored line at the company’s stock-in-transit location, so the quantity is never nowhere while it is on the road. A customer consignment writes a negated mirror at the document’s second store. Everything else lands exactly once, and a line that names nothing at all lands on the branch’s main location.

Reference: Related Applets - Stock Balance — How a FINAL reaches the balance

Step 2 — Recognise stock sitting in a location nobody uses

After this step you will know the inventory symptom on sight. Somebody runs a stock report and finds quantity in a location the shop stopped using, often one that has been closed. That is the precedence doing exactly what it was told: the lines named no store, so the quantity went to the branch’s main location, and the main location is stale. The repair is two moves, not one. Correct the branch’s main location so that new documents land properly, then move the quantity that is already in the wrong place with a stock transfer or a stock adjustment. Fixing the setting alone leaves the misplaced stock exactly where it is.

Reference: Related Applets - Stock Balance — Troubleshooting

Step 3 — Recognise the cash bill your till refuses

After this step you will know a counter failure from its message alone. When a cash bill is finalised, BigLedger compares the location on the bill with the branch’s main location and refuses the document outright when they differ, saying the location does not match the branch’s default location. This check is documented on the cash bill and on nothing else — no page records it on a sales invoice or a delivery order — so treat it as the cash bill’s own. So a shop that has traded all year can stop taking cash the morning after somebody tidied a location record. Either set the branch’s main location to the one the till uses, or open the till on the main location.

Reference: POS General — Troubleshooting

Step 4 — Know why a branch that looks right still fails

After this step you will fix a migrated branch in thirty seconds instead of a day. The main location is held in two places on the branch — a column and an extension record beside it — and the cash-bill check reads the column. A branch that arrived by migration with only the extension filled looks perfectly configured on screen, shows the right location in the field, and refuses every cash bill. The whole fix is to open Branch Edit, pick the location that is already showing, and save it once. If a newly migrated shop cannot take cash on go-live morning, do this before you investigate anything else.

Reference: Organization — Troubleshooting

Step 5 — Set Delivery Location, which is a different field entirely

After this step you will stop conflating two fields that sit next to each other. Main Location is the fallback for stock. Delivery Location is the default store on delivery and packing documents, and it is read there and nowhere else. They are the same place in a small shop and rarely the same place at a branch that ships from a back room or a fulfilment centre. GadgetSphere’s online company ships from its fulfilment site, so that branch names the fulfilment site as its delivery location while its main location stays the counter. Set the two separately, and deliberately, rather than copying one into the other.

Reference: Organization — Branch Details, Pick Pack, Extension and Marketplace

Step 6 — Know the third module that reads this field

After this step you will know where main location reaches that nobody expects. A customer signing in to your online store gets a branch, and it is that branch’s main location extension — the extension this time, not the column — that fills the location on their cart. A branch with no main location recorded leaves it empty. Check that every branch a customer login can reach has one. So one field on one tab decides where a stock line lands, whether a cash bill can be finalised, and whether an online customer can check out. Very little else in the Organisation applet reaches three modules at once, which is why this lesson is about a single setting.

Reference: Organization — Related applets

How the steps fit together

    flowchart TD
  s1["Step 1 — Follow a stock line to the location it lands on"]
  s2["Step 2 — Recognise stock sitting in a location nobody uses"]
  s3["Step 3 — Recognise the cash bill your till refuses"]
  s4["Step 4 — Know why a branch that looks right still fails"]
  s5["Step 5 — Set Delivery Location, which is a different field entirely"]
  s6["Step 6 — Know the third module that reads this field"]
  s1 --> s2
  s2 --> s3
  s3 --> s4
  s4 --> s5
  s5 --> s6
  

Check yourself

Three to five questions on what you just heard. Every correct answer links to the page that makes it correct, so you can check the source, not just the mark.

Next lesson: The branch settings your counter reads · Back to the course