A warehouse is a place where stock stops moving for a while, and the only question that matters is where exactly. Finocket answers it with bins: shelves, racks, staging areas and returns areas inside a location. Goods arrive against a purchase order, get put away into a bin, and are picked out again for a shop or an order.
Bins come first
Open Bins from Inventory and add the places stock actually sits. A code is what is painted on the shelf, such as A1 or RACK-3. It is stored upper-cased and unique within its location, so "a1" and "A1" are the same bin rather than two. Give each one a kind: a staging bin is where a delivery waits to be put away, and a returns bin is where something sent back sits until somebody decides what happens to it.
Until a location has at least one bin, nothing is queued to put away there. That is not a failure. The stock is in the location and the books know it; you simply have not said which shelf.
Putting stock away
Post a goods receipt into a location that has bins and each accepted line becomes a put-away task. Put away shows one at a time, because the person using it has a carton in the other hand: the item, how many, and which bin.
The bin Finocket suggests is a suggestion. Put the goods where they actually go. The bin you choose is what gets recorded. Leave the quantity empty to shelve the whole task, or type a smaller number and the rest stays queued, so a carton split across two shelves loses nothing.
Picking
A pick list is what to take off the shelves, to replenish a shop or to fulfil an order. A new list holds nothing. Release is the moment it holds stock: on-hand does not change, but what is available to promise does, so the shop counter and the website cannot both sell the last one.
When a list is made, Finocket names a bin for each line: the open bin in that location holding the most of the item, and the lines are ordered by bin code. A line for an item that no open bin holds names none, and sits last. Picking is one line at a time: the item, the bin it should be in, confirm. If there are fewer on the shelf than the list asked for, Short records how many you found and why. That is deliberately two taps rather than one: the shop that asked for twelve needs to know eight came and what happened to the rest, and a quietly reduced number tells them nothing.
If you found it in a different bin, pick that bin under Taken from bin before you confirm. The pick is recorded against the bin you chose, so the bin balance follows what you really did. Only the open bins of that location are offered. Finocket refuses a pick against a closed bin. If the suggested bin has since been closed, you are told, and you choose another bin to pick from; when the location has no other open bin, ask the owner to reopen the closed one.
Cancelling a list releases everything it held, so the stock is available again straight away. Finishing one marks it picked and ready to hand over.
Counting one bin
To check a single shelf or rack, open Count a bin, choose the location and the bin, and type what is really there for each item. A line you leave blank is not counted, and is not the same as zero: type 0 only when you counted none. Finishing corrects what Finocket has recorded for that bin. It does not change the location's stock: if a unit is really lost or found, count the location on Count the floor as well. A bin you correct downward shows the difference as stock that is in the location but not on a shelf, ready to put away again.
What this does not do to your stock
Nothing on these screens moves stock out of the building. A hold reserves stock without moving it. The goods are still on the shelf and still yours. The bill or the stock transfer the goods are for is what actually moves them, when they actually go. That is why a released pick list and a dispatched order show different numbers, and why they should.
What happens next is Packing: a picked list becomes packages with a slip that travels with the goods, and dispatching releases what the pick was holding. Goods that come back are received on Returns and inspected before anything goes back on a shelf. Both have their own guide: Packing, dispatch and taking returns back. The parcel itself is booked from Parcels.