The guide
Guide to multi-warehouse management in Switzerland
Several depots help you deliver quickly in Romandy and German-speaking Switzerland alike, but they multiply the chances of error. Here is how to organise your warehouses, locations and transfers so that every quantity shown is right and accounting follows effortlessly.
How do you organise multi-warehouse management in an SME?
Multi-warehouse management starts with an organisational question: what is a warehouse, and what is merely a location? A warehouse has an address, a manager and its own shipping logic; a location is a zone, an aisle or a bin inside that building. An SME with a depot in Crissier and another in Dietikon has two warehouses; consignment stock at a customer or in a service van can be a third.
Next, every item needs a usual storage location in each warehouse. Receipts suggest that location, pickers know where to look, and stocktakes go zone by zone. In Numezis, warehouses and locations are created in minutes, permissions are granted per site, and the consolidated view shows the company's total stock as well as the detail of every bin.
What is the difference between physical, reserved and available stock?
Physical stock is what is actually on the shelves. Reserved stock is the share already promised to confirmed customer orders but not yet delivered. Available stock is the difference between the two: it is the only figure a salesperson should look at before promising a delivery date.
Confusing physical and available is the most common mistake of SMEs that manage stock in a spreadsheet: the same unit is sold twice, and the second customer waits. Numezis calculates all three quantities in real time, per location and per warehouse. A confirmed order immediately reserves the quantities in the shipping warehouse; if available stock is not enough, the alert comes before confirmation, with a proposal for a transfer from another site or a partial delivery. Stock on order from open purchase orders completes the picture.
How do you manage stock transfers between two warehouses?
A transfer between warehouses is never instant: there is a truck, a day or two, sometimes breakage. That is why a serious transfer happens in two steps. On shipping, the units leave the source location and go into transit; on receipt, the destination warehouse confirms what it actually received.
Between those two moments, the goods stay in the stock value and on the stock account: they still belong to the company, even if they sit on no shelf. If 39 units arrive instead of 40, the discrepancy is recorded with its cause, breakage, picking error or loss, and posted to the right account instead of disappearing into a global total. Numezis tracks every open transfer, reminds you of those that drag on and lets the agent prepare a transfer as soon as one site lacks an item another has in excess.
How do you avoid stock-outs and overstock across several sites?
With several warehouses, a local stock-out often hides a surplus elsewhere. Before ordering from the supplier, you therefore need to look at the whole company's stock. Numezis compares each site's levels to its thresholds and first proposes internal rebalancing when it is faster and cheaper than a purchase.
Conversely, overstock shows up in turnover: an item that has not moved for twelve months ties up cash and risks a write-down at the close under art. 960c CO. The dead-stock report per warehouse shows the value tied up and the items concerned, so you can decide on a promotion, a return to the supplier or consolidation on a single site. The agent can prepare this list every quarter and submit it to you without being asked.
How do you connect warehouses to Swiss accounting?
Every stock movement is also an accounting event. A receipt increases the stock account, a delivery reduces it and feeds cost of goods sold, a stock variance goes to a differences account. Under art. 957a CO, these transactions must be recorded completely and supported by vouchers.
In classic multi-warehouse setups, stock lives in one system and accounting in another, linked by a monthly export. Gaps are born in that hole. Numezis removes the hole: every receipt, transfer or delivery produces its entry at the moment of the movement, with a link to the source delivery note or receipt. You can follow stock value per warehouse, or even per profit centre with analytical dimensions, and your fiduciary sees the same figures as your storekeepers.