If you trade from more than one place, Finocket can hold each one as its own shop, with its own code, address, opening hours, manager and tills. Once a shop exists, you can open the next one by copying it, instead of setting everything up again.
A shop is not a godown
These are two different things and Finocket keeps them apart on purpose. A shop sells; a godown holds stock. A shop usually has a godown, a warehouse is a godown with no counter, and a pop-up might share another shop’s godown entirely. So a shop points at a godown rather than owning one, and two shops are allowed to point at the same one, if that is really how you work.
If two shops shared a godown by accident, their stock would be added together and every per-shop stock figure you looked at afterwards would be wrong.
Which godown a shop sells from
With the warehousing and logistics pack switched on for your workspace, the shop’s Edit dialog has a Sells from godown choice. Pick a godown, and every bill rung at that shop’s tills records its items as leaving that godown. Choose No godown and bills rung there record no godown, unless the business has exactly one active godown. Only open godowns are offered; if the shop’s godown has since been closed, it shows marked (closed) until you pick another. If your workspace has no godowns yet, add one on the Inventory screen first.
Shop codes
Every shop needs a short code, such as MAIN or MG-ROAD. Codes are turned into capitals and must be unique within your workspace, so “main”, “Main” and “MAIN” are one shop rather than three. The same code in a different workspace is fine.
Changing a shop, and closing one
Open Shops, tap Edit on the shop and change its code, name, kind, city or state. The dialog opens on Basic (code, kind and name); the city and state sit in Location, which opens by itself when the shop already has them. A code typed wrong on the day you opened the shop is the one people read back to you over the phone, so it is worth correcting. Bills already issued keep the code they were printed with.
A shop is never deleted. It is closed. Every bill, day-end report and GST return that shop produced still points at it, so removing it would leave all of them pointing at nothing. Close this shop in the same dialog stops it being offered as a place to sell from and leaves its history exactly where it was. The shop stays on your list marked Closed, and Reopen brings it back if you start trading there again.
Opening the next shop
On Shops, tap Add a shop and open Copy an existing shop to pick the shop to copy from. Give the new one a name and a code (city and state sit under Location) and Finocket sets it up with the same shape: the same kind, region and opening hours, a bill series of its own, and the same number of tills. The API offers the same thing for anyone setting shops up in bulk.
Its bill numbering starts again at 1, under its own prefix. That is deliberate. If two shops shared one numbering, their bills would interleave and neither would have the continuous run a GST audit expects to see.
What a new shop does NOT inherit
Three of these would be expensive to discover later, so Finocket refuses to copy them and tells you it has refused:
- The godown. A new shop holds its own stock. Pointing it at the old shop’s godown would merge the two shops’ inventory.
- The UPI ID and payee name. Takings must never be routed to another shop’s account by a default nobody chose.
- Stock, staff, price lists and access. A new shop starts empty and is received into. Price lists and who-can-do-what are set for the whole business, not per shop, so the new shop already has them.
The list of what was skipped comes back with the result, so you never have to assume.
If it stops half way
Run it again. Setting up a shop is done in steps, and each step checks whether it has already happened, so a second run finishes what is missing rather than starting over or making duplicates. The result tells you whether it created the shop or resumed one.
The roster
Who works at a shop is recorded as a period, with a start date and an end date, rather than a simple on/off. When somebody leaves, their posting is closed with a date and the record stays. That is what lets you answer “who was on that till in June” months later, a question that comes up whenever stock or a refund needs explaining.
What this does not do yet
Shops are set up on the Shops screen and each till is posted to one, so a sale carries the shop it was rung up in, and Retail intelligence reads sales, stock and customers per shop. To open the next shop from an existing one, choose Add a shop and pick the shop to copy from. Its tills and its bill numbering come across; stock, staff and sales never do, and price lists do not need to, because they are set for the whole business and the new shop already has them. The same copy is available to integrators as POST /v1/stores/provision.