Warehouse concepts

Read this first. The Warehouse module has a few core ideas; once they click, every feature page makes sense.

The building blocks

Four things describe everything the warehouse tracks, and how they relate:

• Items — the catalogue. Each item has a category, a VAT rate and a package size. Items are what you count, order, receive and consume.
• Categories — the structure over items. Every item belongs to a category, and categories nest into a hierarchy for the catalogue, reporting and access.
• Suppliers — who you buy from. Deliveries and supplier orders reference a supplier, and items carry the prices you have paid.
• Departments — the teams that use stock (kitchen, housekeeping, bar…). A department is granted access to certain categories/items, which gates what it can order and hold.

In short: items are grouped by categories, bought from suppliers, and used by departments.

Two stock layers

Livion tracks stock at two levels, and keeping them distinct is the key to the whole module:

1. Central warehouse stock — the main store. Supplier deliveries increase it; fulfilling a department order or transferring stock out decreases it.
2. Department stock — what each department holds locally. It increases when a department receives from the warehouse (or another department) and decreases when the department records consumption.

The same item therefore has a warehouse balance and a per-department balance. Numbers move between the two layers through orders, transfers and returns.

The stock ledger

Every change in stock is a recorded movement, so a quantity never changes without a traceable reason. Movements come from:

• Deliveries in — supplier goods received into the warehouse.
• Consumption out — stock used up by a department.
• Transfers — stock moved warehouse↔department or department↔department.
• Returns — department-to-warehouse and warehouse-to-supplier.

Each item has a ledger showing its movements with a running balance, and a single movement can be opened as a transaction to see its full detail. This is what makes the inventory value and consumption reports trustworthy.

Who can do what

The Warehouse serves two audiences with different permissions:

• Warehouse administrator (WAREHOUSE_ADMIN) — full access to the whole module: managing items, categories, suppliers and department access; recording deliveries; fulfilling orders; running transfers and analysis.
• Department user (WAREHOUSE_DEPARTMENT_INVENTORY, WAREHOUSE_DEPARTMENT_STOCK_TRANSFER) — self-service for their own department only: their inventory, orders, returns and consumption, plus department transfers. They do not manage the catalogue, suppliers or setup.