Inventory management

In the Odoo Inventory app, warehouses handle the broader organization and distribution of stock across different physical sites, while locations provide a more detailed breakdown within each warehouse for efficient item management.

This document serves as an introduction to the terminology and concepts necessary to master Inventory. For specific instructions and examples of how things work, refer to individual documentation pages.

Warehouses

Warehouses represent a physical place, with a physical address, where a company’s items are stored.

Configure routes in a warehouse to control how products move to customers, from vendors, within the warehouse, or between warehouses.

Locations

Locations refer to specific areas within a warehouse, such as shelves, floors, or aisles. These are sub-divisions within a warehouse, and are unique to that warehouse. Users can create and manage numerous locations within a single warehouse to organize inventory more precisely.

See also

Location types

Location types in Odoo help categorize and manage where products are, and what actions need to be taken with them. By default, on the Inventory app ‣ Configuration ‣ Locations page, only internal locations are displayed.

To view the seven location types in Odoo, select any location, and in the Location Type field, there are:

  • Vendor Location: defines an area where products purchased from vendors originate. Items here are not in stock.

  • View: used to organize and structure the warehouse hierarchy. For example, the view location WH (short for warehouse) groups all internal locations, such as Stock, receiving docks, quality checkpoints, and packing areas to show they all belong to the same warehouse.

    Important

    View locations should not contain products, but it is possible to move them there.

  • Internal Location: storage locations within the warehouse. Items stored in these locations are accounted for in inventory valuation.

  • Customer Location: where sold products are tracked; items here are no longer in stock.

  • Inventory Loss: counterpart location to consume missing items or create stock, accounting for discrepancies.

    In Odoo, examples of inventory loss locations are Inventory Adjustment, used to account for discrepancies during an inventory count, and Scrap, which is where damaged goods are sent to account for inventory losses.

    Example

    Virtual Locations/Inventory Adjustment is a location with the Inventory Loss type. The database shows 65 units in WH/Stock, but an inventory check reveals 60. To correct the quantity, five units are moved from WH/Stock to Virtual Locations/Inventory Adjustment.

    screenshot: inventory-management-inventory-loss
    menu
    Inventory ‣ Reporting ‣ Moves History
    shows
    The move line of an inventory adjustment where five units went from WH/Stock to Virtual Locations/Inventory Adjustment.
    highlight
    The destination location "Virtual Locations/Inventory Adjustment" (red frame).
    data
    Database shows 65 units in WH/Stock, the count found 60, so 5 units were moved out.
    module
    stock
    notes
    English UI, light theme, 1440px width, crop to the move line.

  • Production: where raw materials are consumed, and manufactured products are created.

  • Transit Location: used for inter-company or inter-warehouse operations to track products shipped between different addresses, such as Physical Locations/Inter-warehouse transit.

screenshot: inventory-management-locations-list
menu
Inventory ‣ Configuration ‣ Locations
shows
The Locations list with the "Internal" filter removed, so all location types are shown with their colour coding: internal locations in red, view locations in blue, external locations in black.
highlight
None.
data
A database with the default WH warehouse plus Partner, Virtual and Physical Locations.
module
stock
notes
English UI, light theme, 1440px width, full list view; the colour differences must be visible.

Note

In Odoo, location types are color-coded:

  • Red: internal locations

  • Blue: view locations

  • Black: external locations (including inventory loss, vendor, and customer locations).

View locations in Odoo

Odoo databases include preconfigured view locations to organize the hierarchy of locations. These provide helpful context, and distinguish between internal and external locations.

  • Physical locations group internal locations—such as secondary warehouses and subcontractor sites. Because inventory valuation changes only when goods move from internal to external locations, Odoo uses physical locations to track stock that is off-site or in transit without affecting valuation.

Example

When moving products in warehouses WH and WH2, the items are not in either warehouse, but still belong to the company. While in transit, they are placed in the Inter-warehouse transit location, a Transit Location type.

This location is under the view location, Physical Locations, indicating that Inter-warehouse transit is outside of a warehouse, but still part of the company. Doing so does not affect the inventory valuation of the products.

  • Partner locations group customer and vendor locations (external locations) together. Transfers to these locations affect inventory valuation.

  • Virtual locations are locations that do not exist physically, but it is where items that are not in inventory can be placed. These can be items that are no longer in inventory due to loss, or other factors.