As your fulfillment operations scale, managing inventory across multiple physical locations can become complex. techOMS allows you to create Virtual Warehouses to group multiple physical locations into a single, unified inventory pool.
This article explains the concept of Virtual Warehouses, how their inventory levels are calculated, and how they differ from standard physical warehouses .
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
What Is A Virtual Warehouse?
A Virtual Warehouse is a logical grouping of two or more physical warehouses. It does not represent a tangible building; instead, it acts as an aggregated view that combines the inventory data of its member locations.
This feature allows you to see your inventory as it truly exists across regions. For example, if you operate a "West Coast" physical warehouse and an "East Coast" physical warehouse, you can group them into a single "National" Virtual Warehouse. This eliminates fragmented inventory views and improves your ability to plan and allocate stock across your sales channels.
Physical Vs. Virtual Warehouses
While both warehouse types exist within your organization and accounts, they serve different operational purposes:
- Physical Warehouses: Represent tangible locations where inventory is received, stored, and shipped. You can manually create, adjust, and import inventory levels into these locations.
- Virtual Warehouses: Represent read-only, logical groupings. They strictly reflect the combined data of their underlying physical warehouses.
 | Because Virtual Warehouses are purely aggregations, you cannot directly create, adjust, or import inventory levels into them. All inventory adjustments must be made at the physical warehouse level. | |
To learn how to set up both types of warehouses, refer to the following guides:
- How to Manage Organization Warehouses: Create, Edit, and Delete [Step-by-Step Guide]
- How to Manage Account Warehouses and Fulfillment Channels [Step-by-Step Guide]
Virtual Inventory Levels
How Virtual Inventory Levels Are Calculated
Virtual inventory levels provide a near real-time snapshot of your stock. Whenever a change occurs in a member physical warehouse (such as a receipt, allocation, or manual adjustment), the Virtual Warehouse recalculates its quantities automatically.
| Allow a maximum of 30 seconds for any inventory changes in a member physical warehouse to reflect in the Virtual Warehouse totals. | |
The inventory levels for a Virtual Warehouse are calculated as follows:
- Total Quantity: The sum of the Total Quantities of all member physical warehouses.
- Incoming Quantity: The sum of the Incoming Quantities across all member physical warehouses.
- Allocated Quantity: The sum of the Allocated Quantities across all member physical warehouses.
- Available Quantity: The aggregated sellable inventory, calculated dynamically (Virtual Total minus Virtual Allocated).
| For a deeper understanding of what each of these statuses means and how orders impact them, refer to Understanding Inventory Levels and Order Status Impact [Information]. | |
Managing Virtual Inventory
Since Virtual Warehouses rely entirely on physical warehouse data, managing their inventory requires adjusting the stock at the source.
For instructions on managing inventory within the member physical warehouses, refer to the following resources:
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