Items and Warehouse Items

A product exists twice, and every screen in the app depends on the difference.

Record	What it is	Scope
Item	The product itself: its code, its name, its unit, its category	Shared by every warehouse
Warehouse Item	That product enrolled in one warehouse	One warehouse only

An item is a catalogue entry. It holds no stock and knows no bin. Enrolling it in a warehouse creates a second record, and that record is where the warehouse’s own decisions live.

Stock belongs to the warehouse item

Nothing in the app attaches stock to an item. Every record that touches stock points at a warehouse item: a quantity in a bin, a serial number, an RFID tag, a lot, an order line, a ledger row.

That is why an item that is not enrolled cannot be received, picked, transferred, or counted. There is no record for the stock to attach to.

Item: WIDGET-A
├── Warehouse Item in DC-01   → bins, lots, units, orders, ledger rows
└── Warehouse Item in DC-02   → its own bins, lots, units, orders, ledger rows

The two enrollments are independent. DC-01 can run the product as bulk stock while DC-02 tracks every unit by serial number. They share a code and a name, and nothing else.

The enrollment decides three things

The tracking type. Bulk, lot, serial, or RFID. It is chosen here and it is fixed here. See Tracking Types.

The numbers this warehouse works to. The minimum quantity, the reorder point, and the selling price belong to the enrollment, not to the product. One warehouse can reorder at 50 while another reorders at 500.

The notes the floor reads. Handling notes are per warehouse, because the handling is.

The three figures on a warehouse item

Figure	What it means
On hand	Everything physically in this warehouse now
Available	The same figure as on hand
Allocated	Always 0

The app has no reservation accounting yet. Reserving a shipment does not lower a number, it moves the stock into the dispatch bin. So plan from where the stock sits, not from the available figure. See Inventory Model.

Where each answer lives

Question	Record that answers it
What is this product called, and in what unit?	Item
What category does it belong to?	Item
Do we hold it in this building, and how much?	Warehouse Item
Is it tracked by lot, by serial, by tag?	Warehouse Item
When do we reorder it here?	Warehouse Item

A question about the product is an item question. A question about the building is a warehouse item question.

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To create either record, see Managing Items for the catalogue and Warehouse Items for the enrollment.