Warehouses

In the Mailship system, you work with two main types of warehouses – physical and virtual – as well as specific types like "available," "scraping," and "missing." This guide explains how these warehouses function and how to use them effectively.

Physical and Virtual Warehouses

A physical warehouse is a specific physical location where goods are stored. Each physical warehouse can have multiple virtual warehouses, which help you organize and manage inventory. For example:

• A single physical warehouse is sufficient for basic storage needs.

• Multiple virtual warehouses are useful if you run multiple online stores or need to separate inventory for different sales channels.

Virtual warehouses make it easier to manage and distribute inventory across various sales platforms.

Physical warehouses

When you start using Mailship, three types of warehouses are set up for you: Available warehouse, Scraping warehouse, Missing warehouse. Each serves a different purpose and is created as both a physical and virtual warehouse. This structure allows you to manage inventory efficiently, ensuring goods in various states are correctly recorded and accessible for further processing.

Available Warehouse

This is your primary warehouse for goods that are ready for order and distribution without restrictions. Items in this warehouse are fully available for customer orders.

Scraping Warehouse

This warehouse is for recording damaged items that cannot be sold. Goods can enter this warehouse in several ways:

• Receipt of damaged goods from suppliers: If goods arrive damaged, a stock advice is created for the scraping warehouse to properly log them.

• Damaged goods found in storage: These are moved to the scraping warehouse for tracking.

You can ship items from the scraping warehouse using specific orders. Since these aren’t standard orders, it’s recommended to inform customer support, who will ensure proper processing.

Missing Warehouse

This warehouse tracks items that the system lists as in stock but cannot currently be located physically. Mailship moves such items to the missing warehouse to make sure they are not available for orders.

• If items are found later, they are returned to the available warehouse.

• If not found by year-end, they are compensated for during the annual inventory audit.

Virtual warehouses

Virtual warehouses allow you to divide the real physical inventory from the main warehouse into multiple virtual warehouses. This prevents stock depletion in one sales channel due to sales activity in another.

When to Use Virtual Warehouses

Imagine you have two warehouses – Warehouse A (with t-shirts) and Warehouse B (with hoodies). If the demand for t-shirts increases in Warehouse B, you can simply create a transfer from Warehouse A to Warehouse B. This way, you quickly adjust the stock based on current demand and make sure there are enough t-shirts where they are needed.

Transfers in Mailship allow you to manage your stock flexibly, helping you keep operations smooth and reduce downtime caused by a lack of goods in a specific warehouse.

How to Use Virtual Warehouses Practically

• Main Warehouse: Holds the physical stock (e.g., 100 units).

• Virtual Warehouses: Draw inventory from the main warehouse for specific sales channels, such as different online stores or sales in different countries. For example: From 100 units in the main warehouse 50 units are allocated for sales in Italy (IT) and 50 units are allocated for sales in Czech Republic (CZ). This allocation is managed using virtual warehouses.

Transfers Between Virtual Warehouses

Transfers allow you to move goods between virtual warehouses directly in the Mailship portal. These transfers enable flexible stock reallocation between sales channels, which is helpful during changes in demand or marketing campaigns. For more details, see: Transfers

Movement Records

You can find all individual stock movements between warehouses recorded in the Mailship portal, under the section: Internal inventory movements

How to Create a New Virtual Warehouse?

Need a new warehouse? Contact our customer support team – we’ll help set everything up!