More than one place
Multi-location inventory management, without a stock figure that means nothing
The moment a business has two places to keep stock, one number stops being useful. 'We have eleven' is only actionable if you know where the eleven are, and a system that pools them into a single figure is telling a customer an item is in stock when it is two hundred kilometres away.
The second thing that breaks is movement. Goods going from one location to another have to leave one and arrive at the other, and in between they are in neither — or, worse, in both. Handled as two independent adjustments, this is where multi-location stock quietly stops adding up.
Doing it properly needs three things: quantities held per location against one shared catalogue, transfers as a single recorded movement with a state, and reporting that can split or combine without anyone exporting anything.
What you get
What this gives you
One catalogue, many stock figures
Products, prices, barcodes and variants are defined once. Quantities belong to locations, so each branch sees its own position and head office sees all of them.
Transfers as one movement
A transfer leaves one location, arrives at another, and is one record with a state in between — not two adjustments that have to be remembered separately.
Reorder levels per location
What is a comfortable minimum at a busy branch is overstocking at a quiet one. Levels are set where the stock is, so the buying suggestions are worth reading.
Reports that split or combine
Sales, margin, stock turn and shrinkage per location or across the group, from the same records — no export-and-merge to see the whole picture.
Permissions that follow the structure
Staff are scoped to their location. A branch supervisor manages their own stock and staff without seeing another branch's margins or costs.
Honest online availability
Because stock is per location, the storefront can show real availability and route an order — including collection from a specific branch — instead of promising from a pooled number.
Why pooled stock causes the problems it is meant to solve
Pooling is attractive because it makes the online store simple: one number, always the sum. It fails in three predictable ways. Customers are promised goods that cannot reach them in the time implied. Branch managers cannot tell whether a shortage is theirs or the group's. And transfers become invisible, because moving stock between locations does not change the total.
That last one is the expensive one. If a transfer does not change any number your system reports, there is no record that it happened, which means no way to notice when goods leave one branch and never arrive at the other. Shrinkage in transit is a well-known category of loss precisely because it is the easiest to miss.
The fix is not clever logic on top of a pooled figure. It is holding stock where it actually is, and treating a movement between locations as a first-class event with a sender, a receiver, a quantity and a state.
Running a central warehouse and retail branches
A common structure: one warehouse takes supplier deliveries, branches draw from it. What makes this work is receiving against purchase orders at the warehouse, so discrepancies with suppliers are caught at the point they occur, and then treating branch replenishment as transfers rather than as new receipts.
Reorder levels then do real work. Set them per branch, and the replenishment run becomes a list the system produces rather than a judgement someone makes on a Friday. Set them at the warehouse too, against aggregate outflow, and the supplier ordering follows the same logic.
For a wholesale business the same structure supports selling from the warehouse directly — trade customers on agreed price lists, quotations, credit terms and invoicing on account — while the branches run as retail. Both are sales against the same catalogue, tagged so the margins do not get mixed up.
- Receive against purchase orders, not against delivery notes
- Replenish branches as transfers, so nothing is received twice
- Reorder levels per location, tuned to that location's rate of sale
- Count in rolling batches per branch rather than group-wide once a year
- Scope staff permissions to their own location by default
What it costs to add a location
This is worth asking every vendor, because the answers differ by an order of magnitude. Some price per location, some per terminal, some per user, and some require a separate installation per site with its own maintenance.
With sell.ke, multiple locations are a plan step rather than a per-site fee, and there is no per-terminal licence — a branch with three tills costs the same as a branch with one. The practical effect is that opening a location is a business decision rather than a software purchase, and adding a till for a busy period costs the price of a tablet.
Questions
Multi-location inventory — questions
What is multi-location inventory management?
Tracking stock quantities per location — branch, warehouse, van, market stall — against a single shared product catalogue, with movements between those locations recorded as transfers. The distinguishing feature is that 'how many do we have' is always answerable as 'how many, and where', which is the only version of that answer you can act on.
Can different branches have different prices?
Yes. Price lists can be defined per location or per customer group, so a branch in a different market, or a trade customer with agreed terms, can be priced differently without duplicating the products. The catalogue stays single; only the pricing varies.
How do transfers between branches work?
One branch raises the transfer, stock leaves its position, and the receiving branch confirms arrival — at which point it enters theirs. Because it is one record with a state in between, goods in transit are visible rather than briefly belonging to nobody, and a transfer that is never confirmed shows up as an outstanding item instead of disappearing.
Can head office see everything while branches see only themselves?
Yes — that is the default. Roles are scoped to a location, so branch staff work with their own stock, sales and customers, while group-level roles see across all locations. Reports follow the same boundary, so a branch report is genuinely that branch rather than a filtered view someone could widen.
Does the online store sell from a specific branch?
It can. Because stock is held per location, an order can be fulfilled from the location that actually has the goods, or offered for collection from a chosen branch. Systems that pool stock cannot do this honestly, which is why click-and-collect is so often quietly unreliable.
Can I run more than one location?
Yes, from the Basic plan up. Locations share one product catalogue but hold their own stock, so moving goods between them is a recorded transfer rather than a re-count at both ends. Reports run per location or across all of them, and staff permissions are set per location — a branch supervisor does not need to see another branch's margins.
How much does sell.ke cost?
Plans run from USD 12/month for a single-location till to USD 115/month for unlimited scale, with the online store on your own domain included from USD 23/month. In Kenya the same plans are KES 1,499 to KES 14,999/month, billed in shillings. Every plan starts with a 14-day trial and no card, and there is no per-terminal licence and no commission on your sales. There is no hardware to buy either — sell.ke runs on a phone, tablet or laptop you already own.
Does it keep working when the internet drops?
The counter does. Offline mode keeps taking sales, printing receipts and reserving stock while the connection is down, then reconciles everything when it returns — so a bad afternoon costs you connectivity, not revenue or a gap in the record. The parts that are inherently online stay online: card and mobile-money authorisation, tax-authority submission, and the storefront itself all need a live link.
How long does setup take?
A single-counter shop is usually selling the same day. The work is the product list, not the software: import a spreadsheet, scan barcodes, or let Amina build products from a supplier invoice or a photo of your price list. A multi-location business with thousands of SKUs and opening stock counts should plan about a week and run the old system alongside for a fortnight. The 14-day trial is long enough to do exactly that.
Read next
The other pages that answer the question you are probably about to ask.
Inventory management software
Stock that updates itself as it moves, instead of a spreadsheet you maintain.
Omnichannel retail management
Every channel drawing on one inventory, one customer record and one ledger.
All-in-one POS, inventory & online store
One system for the counter, the stock and the website — not three that sync.
Cloud POS
One copy of your data, reachable from anywhere, with no server in the back office.
POS that syncs with your website
Real-time stock between counter and storefront — because they are the same system.
How to keep track of stock
Six habits that work at any size, and when a spreadsheet stops being enough.
Go deeper on a feature
Branches, staff and control
Shared catalogue, separate stock, transfers that are movements, and permissions per branch.
Stock you can trust
Batch and expiry, serial numbers, reorder levels, stock takes and the formulas behind them.
Buying, suppliers and approvals
Purchase orders, goods-received notes, supplier bills and the cost figure every margin depends on.
See it for your trade
Try it on your own products
Fourteen days, no card. Import your product list or let Amina build it from a photo of your price list, and run it alongside whatever you use now.