SKULabs offers two inventory management systems depending on how experienced your team is and if you believe you want to incur the penalties of tracking inventory in multiple locations per warehouse.
Warehouse-based inventory control
Track a single stock level per item within the warehouse it is assigned to. You can still note as many picking location(s) within a warehouse the item can be found. You can still assign that item to multiple warehouses.
Helps your team know where inventory is found but does not force them to select or scan the exact location they are fulfilling from or receiving into. 95% of operations prefer this configuration as it makes managing inventory seamless and it is our recommend method.
The better option if you have fewer than 3 consistent locations for a single product.
Offers significantly lower operational overhead.
No need to create transfers or swap transactions just to move inventory within a warehouse.
Seamlessly functions with Auto-deduct, ShipStation deduction, and POS deduction services. If you ship or fulfill outside of SKULabs, you must use warehouse-based inventory control.
Location-based inventory control
Track multiple stock levels per item within each warehouse. Manage an items individual quantity at each bin/shelf, essentially treating them as their own mini-warehouses.
Best for ad-hoc receiving warehouses where "any shelf will do" or where products are too bulky to consistently store in the same location.
High operational overhead not suited for many operations.
Requires regular cycle counts, cycle count reconciliation, transfers, and maintenance of the inventory system to keep up to date with transactions made within each warehouse.
Incompatible with Auto-Deduct, ShipStation, and POS software due to risk of effectively uncontrollable deduction locations without precise operations control mandating an order of steps to occur prior to fulfillment or shipping orders in third-party software. (Warehouse-based inventory system is perfectly compatible with these operations).
Incompatible with certain remote-deduction workflows such as depending on third-party software to ship your orders when you can not or will not be scanning/verifying orders in SKULabs.
How can I tell which inventory system I use?
If you signed up after October 2018, the default inventory system is "warehouse-based".
Before October 2018, the only option was "location-based", and those accounts remained on "location-based" inventory.
To view your current inventory system settings, click Settings > Inventory > Settings. To convert from one inventory system to another, contact SKULabs support to get the process started.