Stock transfers
Moving twelve crates from the store room to the Kabalagala shop is the most ordinary thing a business with branches does. A transfer records it so both branches' stock counts stay true.
A transfer is not a sale
Nothing is bought or sold when goods move between your own branches. The crates change shelf, not owner. No revenue is booked at the sending branch and no cost at the receiving one, so your profit figures do not move at all — which is exactly right, because nothing entered or left the business.
You need two branches before this page applies. See Branches.
Why it happens in two steps
A transfer is sent, then received. Not one action, for a reason that shows up in the first week: a boda takes an hour, and during that hour the crates are at neither branch.
| Step | Where the stock is |
|---|---|
| Draft | Still at the sending branch. Nothing has moved |
| Sent | Gone from the sender. On the road — belongs to the business, at no branch |
| Received | At the receiving branch, at the quantity actually counted |
Doing it in one step would mean stock appearing at the destination before it arrives, and a stock take at the receiving branch that never matches.
1. Draft the transfer
Select Stock transfers in the sidebar, then New transfer.
- Choose the branch it is going From and the branch it is going To.
- Add each product and how many.
- Add a note if it helps — "Saturday restock".
- Select Save as draft.
A draft is weightless. Nothing has left anyone's stock, so it is safe to build one crate by crate on a bad connection and finish it later.
2. Send it
When the goods physically leave, select Send.
Stock drops at the sending branch immediately, because it has actually gone. It does not appear at the destination yet.
You cannot send stock that is spoken for
Stock reserved by an open sale is not available to transfer — sending it would oversell the customer standing at the till. If a branch has 10 and 6 are reserved, you can send 4.
SBB draws from wherever inside that branch actually holds the goods, spilling from one location to the next. Eight crates in the store room and four behind the bar is still twelve crates.
On the road
While a transfer is sent but not received, its contents show at the top of the page under On the road.
This line exists because stock in transit is stock nobody is counting. Without it named somewhere, it looks exactly like shrinkage — and that is how inventory quietly drifts away from reality.
A transfer that has been out for more than a few days is flagged Not received yet. Chase those; they are the ones that turn into arguments at stock take.
3. Receive it — count what actually arrived
At the receiving branch, select Receive.
The count boxes start empty on purpose. We do not pre-fill them with the quantity sent. A box already showing "12" trains people to tap through without looking, and then a missing crate is discovered weeks later at stock take with nobody able to say where it went.
Count the goods. Type what is really there.
When the count is short
Twelve sent, eleven arrived. This happens, and how you handle it decides whether anyone trusts the numbers.
- Enter 11. A note box appears, and you cannot finish without filling it.
- Say what happened. "One crate broken" and "one crate missing" are different conversations, and this note is the only place that difference is ever written down.
- The shortfall is recorded as shrinkage against the sending branch. They dispatched it, so the loss is theirs until somebody proves otherwise.
You cannot receive more than was sent. A transfer moves stock; it must never be able to create it. If more turned up than left, something else is wrong — raise a stock correction instead.
Cancelling
Chose the wrong destination? Select Cancel and say why.
- Cancelling a draft simply drops it.
- Cancelling a sent transfer returns the stock to the sending branch.
The branch total comes back exactly. The goods may land in a different spot inside that branch than they left from — send from the bar and the store room at once and they return together — which you can tidy with an ordinary location-to-location move.
Who can do what
Deliberately not symmetrical:
| Action | Who |
|---|---|
| Send | Somebody assigned to the sending branch |
| Receive | Somebody assigned to the receiving branch |
| Cancel | The sending branch, since the stock comes back to them |
A storeman assigned only to the main shop can send to a branch he cannot otherwise see. He picks the destination by name and learns nothing else about it.
That is on purpose. Requiring access to both ends would make transfers impossible for exactly the people who perform them — and anyone assigned to the destination can still see what is coming to them, and who sent it, or a delivery would arrive with no record of anybody having dispatched it.
What your books see
Nothing, which is the point.
| Effect | |
|---|---|
| Sent | Stock down at the sender. No revenue, no expense |
| Received | Stock up at the receiver. No revenue, no expense |
| Shortfall | Shrinkage — a real expense — at the sending branch |
| Consolidated profit & loss | Unchanged |
If moving your own stock between your own shops showed up as turnover, a business with three branches would appear to sell to itself, and every revenue figure you have would be inflated by however much you move internally.
Reference numbers
Every transfer gets one — TRF-0007 — because people read these to each other over the phone.