Branches, and the location your stock lands in — transcript

Play this as a presentation — one slide per step, with the same narration. Every word of every step is on this page.

This lesson is for you if GadgetSphere Sdn Bhd exists and has nowhere to trade from. Branches and locations are two words people use interchangeably and BigLedger does not, and the single field at the heart of that difference decides where your stock physically lands. About twelve minutes.

Step 1 — Create a branch and let it create its location

After this step GadgetSphere has its first shop. Create Branch opens with a radio you should read rather than skip: create a default location, or choose an existing one. Take the default for a new branch. Saving then posts the branch, posts a location for it, and writes that location back onto the branch as its main location, all in one go. Give the branch a code you can read at a glance on a document number — GadgetSphere uses a region and a sequence, so the first Klang Valley shop is GS-KV-01. Twenty-two branches is a lot of typing, so agree the code shape with your team before the first one, because branch codes cannot be changed either.

Reference: Organization — Screens and menus

Step 2 — Understand what Main Location actually decides

After this step you will understand why stock sometimes appears in a store nobody chose. When a stock movement has to decide which location it affects, BigLedger works down a short list. It uses the delivery location on the document line if there is one. Failing that, the store on the line. Failing that, the store on the document header. And failing all three, the branch’s main location. So the main location is not a cosmetic default — it is the catch-all that quietly absorbs every document where nobody said where the goods were. On a twenty-two branch retailer, that is a great many documents, and it is why this field deserves a minute of thought per branch rather than a click.

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

Step 3 — Know the cash bill your till will refuse

After this step you will recognise a point-of-sale failure from its message alone. At the moment 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. Nothing else in the product does this check — an invoice is happy, a delivery order is happy, only the cash bill insists. There is a second wrinkle worth knowing: the check reads the main location column on the branch, not the extension record beside it, so a branch migrated in with only the extension filled fails every cash bill until somebody opens it and saves Main Location once. If a shop cannot take cash on go-live morning, look here first.

Reference: Organization — Troubleshooting

Step 4 — Set the other branch fields that reach other modules

After this step the branch is configured rather than merely created. Delivery Location is the default store for delivery and packing documents, which matters most at a branch that ships from a back room rather than the shelf. Default Entity Branch is the party the branch trades as when it deals with another company in the group or with a consignee. Default Pricing chooses which price book the branch’s documents start from. Currency, five-cent rounding, the rounding item and the group discount item all override the company’s values here, and point of sale reads the branch value. And the branch’s own timezone is what marketplace date windows use, branch first, before the company’s.

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

Step 5 — Know the branch switch that hides a shop from LHDN

After this step you will check one box before you ever wonder where a branch’s e-invoices went. Every branch carries a Skip E-Invoice flag, and at the moment a document is finalised BigLedger excludes it from e-invoicing if that flag is set on the document itself, on its branch, or on the customer. One tick on one branch takes that whole shop out of your e-invoice reporting, silently, and the shop carries on trading exactly as before. Leave it off unless you have a specific reason and have written that reason down. It is the kind of setting that is switched on during a migration and remembered a year later.

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

Step 6 — Stop looking for a default branch to set

After this step you will save yourself an afternoon. Several applets offer you a Default Branch and a Default Location under Settings or Personalization, complete with a save button. In the Organisation applet, in Tenant Admin and in Cashbook, those controls save nothing that any screen reads — and in the Organisation applet’s Personalization the control writes into something that was never loaded, so it errors quietly and stores nothing at all. This is not a permission problem and it is not a bug you can configure around. There is no tenant-wide default branch. What decides a document’s branch is what the person raising it picks, and what they are permitted to see.

Reference: Organization — Applet settings

Step 7 — Set the location class, and leave the transit location alone

After this step your locations are ready for the modules that filter on them. A location is either basic or consignee-class, and the consignment applets filter their pickers on that class, so a consignee site keyed as a basic location will simply not appear where it is needed. Outlet type and outlet size are reporting dimensions you define once under Settings and pick here. And you will find a stock-in-transit location under the company that nobody created — BigLedger made it when the company was saved, as the holding place stock sits in between branches. Leave it be. The Stock Transfer applet already keeps it out of the destination picker so nobody ships goods into it.

Reference: Organization — Location

How the steps fit together

    flowchart TD
  s1["Step 1 — Create a branch and let it create its location"]
  s2["Step 2 — Understand what Main Location actually decides"]
  s3["Step 3 — Know the cash bill your till will refuse"]
  s4["Step 4 — Set the other branch fields that reach other modules"]
  s5["Step 5 — Know the branch switch that hides a shop from LHDN"]
  s6["Step 6 — Stop looking for a default branch to set"]
  s7["Step 7 — Set the location class, and leave the transit location alone"]
  s1 --> s2
  s2 --> s3
  s3 --> s4
  s4 --> s5
  s5 --> s6
  s6 --> s7
  

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.

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