Warehouse
In ERPNext, a warehouse is a physical or logical location where stock items are stored. It is not only independent business buildings that are widely utilized by manufacturers, importers, exporters, and logistics providers, but even more specific storage facilities like rooms, shelves, or even bins. In ERPNext, "Warehouse" is a generic term and can be employed to denote a hierarchical decomposition in order to track internal inventory. You can configure for example:
This tree-like warehouse enables businesses to monitor and manage their stock locations at fine-grained levels. ERPNext v15 further enhances this with the capability of drag-and-drop warehouse nodes and capacity limits per storage location. ERPNext will warn the user before going beyond the designated limit in a transaction, thus improving stock control and space planning.
Warehouse List Access
To see and manage the Warehouse list:
Here, all current warehouses and sub-warehouses are displayed within a collapsible tree format, allowing easy traversal of multi-level storage configurations.
1. How to Create a Warehouse
The following are steps to create a new warehouse in ERPNext:
Go to the Warehouse list and click New
Type in the Name of the warehouse or storage facility (for example, "Central Warehouse", "Room A", or "Shelf 5")
Choose a Parent Warehouse if the warehouse is one in a sequence of storage areas.
- If the warehouse will contain other sub-warehouses (such as rooms or shelves), choose the Is Group option. This creates the warehouse as a non-stock-holding parent node within the hierarchy.
If so, define the Storage Capacity Limit of the warehouse. ERPNext v15 will now impose these limits and notify users when stock transactions exceed available capacity
Save the record
Warehouse entries are automatically tagged with the Company abbreviation, so that users will know instantly which warehouse belongs to which company, particularly in multi-company scenarios.
1.1 More Options when Creating a Warehouse
When you define a Warehouse in ERPNext, you have several configuration options that enhance control and reporting.
Account: Provide a default ledger account for this Warehouse. In Perpetual Inventory mode, this binds stock movement to book entries, so all stock transactions (incomings, outgoings, movements) are transacted in the general ledger. ERPNext v15 ensures that only warehouses belonging to the correct company and account can be used, which prevents issues with transactions.
Warehouse Type: ERPNext v15 allows you to assign a Warehouse Type (like "Stock Warehouse," "WIP Warehouse," "Supplier Warehouse," or "Room") to storage locations to assist you in organizing them. This classification is useful when filtering stock reports, draft picking lists, or used as part of procurements workflows to automatically send material to the correct type of warehouse.
Address & Contact: You can insert several addresses (Billing, Shipping, physical) for warehouse location and add contact details, such as a warehouse manager's email or phone. The fields are helpful while creating delivery notes, receipt of purchases processes, or logistic coordination even from ERPNext's interface.
1.2 After Saving the Warehouse
After creating or editing the warehouse, ERPNext v15 offers several contextual actions to make operations easier:
Stock Balance: Pops up the Stock Balance report for this warehouse, with current item quantities, valuation, and commitment status.
General Ledger: Shows all accounting entries in this warehouse's stock account, making it easy to reconcile and audit.
Non‐Group to Group Conversion: In case a warehouse is already established as a leaf (stock-holding) node and you wish to switch it to a parent location that can store sub-warehouses (like switching "Room A" to a shelf group), this option brings the same thing into effect with ease.
2. Features
2.1 Tree View
ERPNext allows viewing of warehouses in hierarchical Tree View, simpler to visualize and manage multi-level storage arrangement—whether straightforward warehouse configuration or complex series of rooms, rows, shelves, and bins. ERPNext v15 adds drag-and-drop reordering to this feature, making UI more usable when changing warehouse layout.
2.2 Warehouse Account
In perpetual inventory systems, each warehouse must be linked to a specific company and a separate ledger account—generally named the same as the warehouse. This linking must occur so that stock valuations and inventory transactions are properly posted in the company's accounts. For advanced warehouse hierarchies, it is typically sufficient (and a good practice) to tie sub-locations (such as rooms or bins) to the top-level parent warehouse's account. This avoids unreasonably high accounting entry sophistication for incremental stock movement.
Note: ERPNext keeps stock balance for each item-warehouse combination. You can show stock quantities of any item in any warehouse or sub-location as of any past date—a feature that is indispensable for auditing, inventory inspection, or period-end stock verification.