How to manage inventory across multiple branches
Manage inventory across branches by keeping one set of records with a location on every unit, so each branch sees its own stock and head office can see and move all of it.
Running stock across two sites is a different job from running it across one. The hard part is not the counting. It is knowing where things should be.
One set of records, many locations
The usual failure is a separate system per branch, whether that is separate spreadsheets or separate logins. It guarantees that nobody can answer "do we have one anywhere" without ringing round, and that is the whole question.
Keep one set of records with a location on every unit. Each branch sees its own. Head office sees all of it.
Location and custody are not the same thing
Custody is who is holding a unit. Location is where it sits. Running them together causes confusion, because a unit held by a technician working out of one branch is still that branch's stock.
What to centralise, what to leave local
Centralise purchasing, supplier terms, pricing policy and the rules about who can discount. These should not differ by branch, and letting them drift is how one branch quietly stops being profitable.
Leave the day-to-day local: receiving, selling, assigning stock to staff and counting. A branch manager who has to ring head office to move a unit will stop recording the movement.
Move stock before buying more
The most expensive habit in multi-branch retail is one branch ordering what another is sitting on. Before any purchase order, ask the question the other way round: do we have this anywhere already?
The comparison to make is not who has the most. It is whose sales rate says they need it. A branch holding twenty and selling none has spare. A branch holding five and selling two a day does not, even though five is the smaller number.
Treat transfers like handovers
Move stock between branches the same way you hand it to a person, with the receiving branch confirming. Until they do, it belongs to the sending branch. Stock that has left one branch and not arrived at another is exactly where losses live.
Count branch by branch
Stock takes are per location. A business-wide count that nets two branches against each other hides both problems.
Compare branches once the data is in one place
This is the most useful management tool you get out of the exercise: sell-through, margin, stock ageing and shrinkage per branch. Big differences usually come down to how a branch is run, and they are invisible while the data sits in separate systems.
Doing this in StockRada
Locations on every unit, transfers that wait to be acknowledged, per-branch reporting, and suggested transfers where one branch is about to run out of what another is overstocked on. See [multi-branch inventory](/multi-branch-inventory/).
Questions people ask
Should each branch have its own inventory system?
No. Separate systems make it impossible to answer whether stock exists anywhere in the business without ringing round. Keep one set of records with a location on every unit.
How do I decide which branch should get stock?
By sales rate rather than by how much each is holding. A branch with twenty units selling none has spare. One with five selling two a day does not.