Introduction
When you are setting up your warehouse management system using PVX, two of the most important tasks are to add the locations in your warehouse and the database of product items that will form the warehouse's inventory. Both of these usually contain a large amount of data, and although they can be entered manually into the web app, this will be very time-consuming and is likely to lead to mistakes. It is far better to use CSV files to import the data.
Before you attempt this task, please read the following articles to familiarise yourself with the recommended structure of a warehouse and how CSV importing works:
Importing your warehouse layout
To illustrate how to set up a warehouse layout in PVX using CSV files, we will use the following example of a location hierarchy:
1 site with 1 warehouse which contains 3 zones, each zone contains 4 aisles, each aisle has 6 bays, each bay has 3 shelves and each shelf has 4 boxes (the boxes are the locations of the items).
1. Set up the sites
If your warehouse locations are spread across more than one site, you must set up these sites first in PVX. We recommend that you use the web app as described in this article. This is usually quicker and easier than using a CSV template because the number of sites in a WMS will normally be small.
Note: In our example where the WMS only covers one site, this step is not required as the site exists in PVX by default as 'PrimarySite'.
2. Prepare a locations group CSV file
Define the location hierarchy of your warehouse (not including the locations themselves) using a location groups CSV file. This contains the location group name, barcode prefix (the root of the location barcode), parent location group (optional), location group type, sequence (optional) and site, as defined in the location groups integration template in PVX.
Note: You can use the location group types template (not shown here) to define your own group types if the default options in PVX are insufficient (for example, pallet can be created as a location group type if you use these for storing inventory in bays). Refer to the list of integration templates for more information.
Create the data table in your spreadsheet application, and save it as a *.csv file. It is usually easiest to create the table in order of the location group type; that is, first the warehouse, then zones, aisles, bays and finally shelves (not shown in the picture below). Apply a logical sequence to the barcode prefix as described in the article on laying out your warehouse. Including the ParentLocationGroup column can help with this by acting as a reference.
The colours in the example shown below are included for clarity and are not required in your CSV file.
Once you have created all your location groups, you can sort the table by barcode prefix to check the logic of the hierarchy:
In this example, there are 404 location groups. Note that we haven't created table entries for the boxes on each shelf in this example; these are the actual locations of the inventory items and they must be imported using a different template.
3. Import the location groups
Configure the location groups integration template as shown below, and then import your CSV file into PVX as described in this article.
4. Prepare a locations CSV file
You now need to define the barcodes for the locations in which the inventory items themselves will be stored (in our example, the boxes on each shelf in the warehouse). You must specify the barcode, location name (usually the same as the barcode), location group (defined by the barcode prefix constructed in the previous CSV file) and location use type (Bulk, Pick, Quarantine, etc). It’s also recommended (but not mandatory) to specify the sequence. The barcode is defined by extending the barcode prefix numbering system used in the location groups CSV file.
Save the table as a *.csv file. Spreadsheet applications can help with preparing files like this as you can populate logical sequences automatically. This can be useful when handling large numbers of lines in a table (the example we have used contains 1152 locations!).
5. Import the locations
Configure the locations integration template as shown below (note that we are not using the zone reference field in this example), and then import your CSV file into PVX as described in this article.
You should now be able to view the locations and the hierarchy of location groups in the Locations tab in the Warehouse module of the PVX web app.
Note: The CSV files used in this example are attached to this article for you to use as a template for importing your own warehouse layout.
Importing your product database
You can set up a product database in PVX in a similar way to importing warehouse locations.
If you want to assign items to item groups then you must first import a CSV file containing your item groups that matches the item type groups integration template. This can be as simple as a list of the item groups that you want to use to organise your product database in PVX. If your item group structure has multiple levels then you also need to define the parent group for each item group.
The item types integration template is used to import the items themselves into PVX. ItemCode is the only mandatory field in this template, but there are many other fields available for including useful information about your items, such as the inventory quantity that triggers a reorder of the item, the lead time for delivery and the default order quantity. Refer to the list of integration templates for more information.
Once you've imported your items, you can add more information about them using other integration templates. If you want to use units of measure in your WMS, then you can import the unit for each item and the quantity of items it contains using the item type units template. If you import the details of your suppliers into PVX using the suppliers and supplier addresses integration templates, you can link each item to a supplier using the item type suppliers integration template. Finally, you can import item kit details using the item type kittings integration template.