Bins

A location tells you where your stock is. A bin tells you where it is inside that location.

Bins are shelves, racks, zones, spec groupings like '16GB / 1TB SSD', or states like 'Needs repair'. Your location totals never change when you use them. A bin only says where within the location the stock sits, so the numbers on your reports stay exactly as they are.

Bins are off until you turn them on, and you can rename them to whatever your team already says: Bin, Shelf, Rack, Zone or Position.

What people use bins for

Finding stock quickly. 'Aisle 3, Rack B' instead of walking the warehouse.
Selling by specification. A laptop shop can hold one item, 'HP EliteBook 840 G8', and use bins for '8GB / 256GB', '16GB / 1TB SSD' and so on. You get spec-level stock and spec-level receipts without creating a separate item for every combination.
Holding stock back. A 'Needs repair' bin keeps machines on your books but out of what you can sell.

Turning bins on

Bins change how stock is described, so switching them on is a short guided process rather than a single checkbox. Go to Settings, Inventory, Bins.

Give each location a default bin. The page lists every location that holds stock. Any location without a default bin is flagged, and you can create one right there ('Main shelf' is a good first name). The default bin is where stock lands when a document does not say otherwise.
Preview the move. This reports how many stock balances and serial numbers would move into their default bins. It writes nothing, so you can press it safely.
Move the balances. This puts your existing stock into the default bins you chose. It only ever fills in gaps, so running it again after fixing one location is safe.
Turn bins on.

::: tip You can turn bins off again later, but only once no bin holds stock. Consolidate everything into one bin per location first. This protects you from a state where your location totals are right and your bin balances are stranded. :::

Creating bins

Go to Inventory, Bins. The page always shows one location at a time, because a bin belongs to exactly one location.

One at a time. 'New bin' asks for a name and, optionally:

Short code, used on printed labels and for scanning.
Pick order, a number that sorts your bins along your picking route. Lower numbers come first.
Stock here cannot be sold, for states like quarantine or repair. Stock in these bins stays on your books and in your stock reports, but is left out of available stock and cannot be picked on a sales document.
Make this the default bin for the location.

In bulk, from a template. If your bins follow a pattern, name the pattern once and generate every combination.

Bin templates

A template names the attributes and their options. 'RAM' with '8GB, 16GB, 32GB' and 'Storage' with '256GB, 1TB SSD' produces six bins: '8GB / 256GB', '8GB / 1TB SSD', and so on. Templates live in Settings, Inventory, Bins, and you generate from them on the Bins page.

Generating is additive. Combinations that already exist are skipped and left untouched, so adding a '32GB' option later and re-running creates only the new bins and never disturbs the ones holding stock. The result tells you how many were created and how many already existed.

A large run is never silently trimmed. If a template would create more bins than the safe threshold, you are asked to confirm the exact number first.

If you later remove an option from a template, use Check for orphans on the template. It lists the bins the template no longer produces, offers to deactivate the empty ones, and names any that still hold stock so you can move that stock first.

Putting stock away

When bins are on, documents that bring stock in (bills, transfers in, positive adjustments) can name a bin on each line. You can split one line across several bins: six into one, four into another. The screen shows how much is still unallocated as you type.

If a line names no bin, the stock lands in that location's default bin, so your bin balances always add up to your location totals.

To make it a requirement rather than an option, switch on Require a bin when stock comes in. Lines that have no bin are then flagged as you work, not at the end.

Moving stock between bins

Inventory, Bins, Move stock moves stock inside one location. Nothing is dispatched or received, no journal entry is posted, and your location totals do not change. Only the bin split moves.

There are two ways to work:

By quantity. Pick the item, the bin it is in, the bin it is going to, and how many. If a bin does not hold that much, the move is refused and tells you what is actually there.
By scanning. Scan a bin label to set the destination, then scan units into it. Each serial number is looked up as you scan, so you never have to say where it is now. Scanning the same unit twice warns you instead of counting it twice.

Printing bin labels

On the Bins page, select the bins you want and choose Print labels, or print every bin at the location from the header. Each label carries the bin name in large type, a scannable barcode, and the short code printed underneath so it can be read by eye when a scan fails. Bins without a short code print the name only.

Select several bins at once to activate, deactivate or print them together instead of one at a time.

Selling by bin

By default, sales simply take stock from the location and your warehouse decides which shelf to pick from.

Switch on Let sales pick the bin to sell from and invoices and packages gain a bin picker. This is what makes spec-level selling work: the salesperson picks the item, then the specification.

The picker only offers bins that actually hold that item, with the quantity beside each, so a location with two dozen spec bins still shows only the two or three that matter. Bins marked 'cannot be sold' are never offered.

On invoices and receipts

There are two ways to get the bin onto paper, and you normally want one or the other:

In the line description. In Settings, Inventory, Bins, set 'Add the bin to the line description' to 'Add it after the description'. The saved line then reads 'HP EliteBook 840 G8, 16GB / 1TB SSD'. Your own wording is always kept underneath, so changing this setting later puts the description back exactly as you typed it.
As a separate detail. In Settings, Documents, Invoices, switch on 'Show sublocation details' for the invoice, receipt, delivery note or packing slip you want it on. Each document type is separate, so a receipt can name the bin while the packing slip stays clean.

Whichever you choose, the bin name is saved onto the document when you save it. Renaming a bin next year never rewrites what an old invoice said.

Seeing where your stock is

On an item. The item page shows 'By bins at ⟨location⟩' under the location totals, with a note if any of the stock sits in a bin that cannot be sold.
Stock by Bin report. Reports, Inventory, Stock by Bin lists every bin and item at a location, with how much cannot be sold and how much is not in a bin yet. It is a snapshot of right now, so it has no date range.
Movement history. The item's Movement History and the Item Stock Ledger both show which bins each movement touched. A move between shelves reads 'Main shelf to 16GB / 1TB SSD'. The Item Stock Ledger can also be narrowed to a single bin, which answers 'what happened on that shelf'.

Different rules at different locations

A warehouse and a till point rarely work the same way. Under Settings, Inventory, Bins there is a per-location table where each location can:

Use bins or not. A location that opts out keeps working exactly as it does today: no bin pickers, no default bin needed, and it is left out of the checks.
Require a bin coming in, going out, or let sales pick the bin, each set to Inherit, Yes or No. 'Inherit' follows the organization setting, so changing the organization default later still reaches every location that never disagreed with it.

This is what lets you adopt bins in the warehouse without touching your shops on the same day.

Availability and non-sellable bins

Stock in a bin marked 'cannot be sold' stays on your books and in your stock reports, but is excluded from available stock, exactly like stock already promised to someone. A machine in 'Needs repair' is stock you own and cannot sell.

You can turn this off under Settings, Inventory, Bins if you would rather have that stock offered for sale.

Things worth knowing

A bin belongs to one location. Stock moved between locations is a stock transfer, not a bin move.
Bins that have held stock are deactivated rather than deleted, because documents and serial numbers still refer to them. A bin created by mistake and never used can still be deleted outright.
Moving batch-tracked stock between bins is not supported yet. Adjust it out and back in, or move it on a document.