Introduction

Before you start to set up the locations of your inventory items in the PVX web app, you should spend some time planning the layout of your warehouse so that the storage structure forms a logical hierarchy. From this you can generate a numbering system that you can use to barcode-label each location. This process is described in a separate article.

Once you have completed your planning, two ways exist to set up locations in PVX. This article describes how to enter them manually using the web app. You can also use an integration to import the locations from a CSV file, which is described separately. The CSV file method will be easier to use if you have a large number of locations that you are setting up for the first time in PVX. However, if there are small changes to the locations in future, then it is useful to know how to make adjustments manually to avoid having to re-import everything again.

We will use the following example in this article:

• A single site, AB Toys, houses a single warehouse which contains three zones.

• Each zone has:

  • Four aisles.

  • Each aisle has six bays.

  • Each bay has three shelves and on each shelf will be four boxes.

Note: As you set up your warehouse structure in the WMS, recognise that the location hierarchy consists of both the location group categories (zones, aisles, bays and shelves) and the locations where the actual inventory items are placed (boxes); these are treated differently in PVX.

Setting Up a Site

A site is a business property or address where you want to record the storage of inventory items. Do not include sites in PVX if they do not receive inventory, such as administrative centres or head offices.

Sites are the foundation level of the location group hierarchy and must be set up first in PVX before other levels can be created.

1. Go to the Sites tab in the Setup module of the PVX web app.

2. Click Add New, enter a name, reference and address details for your site and click Save. Make sure that the Active box is ticked. If you plan to use the Replenish function to move inventory from bulk to pick locations, then tick the Replenish box.
   
   

You can use the Sites tab to edit a site after it is saved. Select the site and click View, then click Edit in the Edit Site dialog and click Save once you've made your changes.

Note: Sites cannot be deleted once they are created, but unticking the Active box in the Edit Site dialog prevents any further transactions of inventory in that site.

Setting Up the Location Hierarchy

1. Go to the Locations tab in the Warehouse module of the PVX web app.

2. Click the site that you've just created in the Categories list in the left window and click the Edit button below it.
   
   
   

3. In the Manage sub category groups dialog, edit the default location that has already been created for the site by PVX. This will become the warehouse in our example. Enter a name, barcode prefix and category type (sequencing is described separately) and click Save. If you wanted to add another warehouse, you could do so by clicking Add new sub categories and completing the table entries in a similar way.
   
   
   

4. Click the new warehouse in the Categories list and click Edit.
   
   
   

5. In the Manage sub category groups dialog, click Add new sub categories.

6. Enter the number of sub category groups you want to add for the next level in the hierarchy and click Add. In our example, we want to add three zones to the warehouse.

7. Edit the name, barcode prefix and category type for each zone and click Save. Keep the naming and barcode format consistent; you can click the Copy button at any time to apply the same format to the remaining entries in the list.
   
   
   

8. Continue to add sub categories to each level of the hierarchy in the same way until you complete the penultimate level (the shelves in our example). You now need to add the locations themselves, the boxes on the shelves, which do not appear in the Categories list.

9. Click the first shelf category in the list and then click Edit locations in the right-hand window.
   
   
   

10. In the Create sub locations dialog, click Add new sub locations.

11. In a similar way as for category groups, enter the number of sub locations (four in our example) and click Add.

12. Enter the name and barcode for each location.

13. Select the Location use type from the dropdown list.

14. If you have set up Storage types in your system, select the appropriate one for each location from the dropdown list.

15. Click Save. The locations will be displayed in the Locations window. Continue to add locations to all the other shelf category groups in the hierarchy.
    
    

Once you have created all your locations, you are ready to start filling them with inventory using the Register feature in the PVX mobile app.

Editing and Deleting Locations

If your warehouse structure changes in the future, perhaps because of an expansion in your business, you can easily add further category groups and locations in the same way as described above.

You can also remove locations and category groups from the structure providing that they do not contain any inventory:

• To delete locations, click the location in the Locations window and then click Delete. A dialog asks you to confirm the deletion by clicking Proceed.

• To delete category groups, first make sure that any locations within the hierarchy of that category group are empty of inventory; then select the category group in the Categories window and click Delete.

Bulk Deleting

While integration templates in the User Interface (UI) can be used to import or edit locations in bulk, PVX does not support the deletion of locations (or any other data) through this method. However, two methods are available for bulk deleting.

1. Deleting Via the API

The integration template ‘Locations’ can be used to delete locations through the Peoplevox API. Please see our API Guide for more information.

2. Deleting Via Support Ticket

If you are unable to delete locations via the API, we would recommend the following workflow to delete locations:

1. Ensure that Locations to be deleted are empty. To ensure that locations are empty, an “Item Inventory Summary by Location” report can be run from the PVX UI. This report can then be filtered to check that no items in locations need to be deleted.

2. Rename Locations Using the Integration Template:

   1. Obtain a complete export of Locations by following the below steps:

      1. Navigate to the Integration section of the UI.

      2. Navigate to the ‘Integration Templates’ tab.

      3. Select Locations from the list.

      4. Click Export. It may take some time to generate the export.

   2. First, take a backup of the file (you’ll need this later).

   3. Open the resulting file in a spreadsheet viewer (e.g., Excel), ensuring that no data is lost by number formatting, formulas, date type etc.

      • Depending on your version of Excel, the safest way to do this is by opening a new Workbook, navigating to the ‘Data’ tab and selecting From Text/CSV. Follow the steps and ensure that you change the data detection type to ‘Do not detect data types’, or the column format to ‘Text’ on older versions of Excel.

   4. Rename the locations that are to be deleted “XXXDELETEXXX”.

   5. Remove any locations that are not required to be deleted from the spreadsheet (delete rows).

   6. Important: Do not change any other data.
      
      
      

   7. Save the file as a CSV (comma separated values).

3. Raise a ticket with PVX support.

Raise a support ticket, making sure that you:

• Specify the name of the locations to be deleted (e.g., “XXXDELETEXXX”)

• Attach the CSV file of the renamed locations created at the end of step (2).

• Attach the backup of the original location export.

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