Most managers think the hard part of running two warehouses is the technology. It isn’t. The hard part is deciding who owns stock when it’s sitting on a truck between them.
I’ve watched a 45-person wholesaler discover £52,000 of inventory that had been “in transit” for more than 90 days. Nobody stole it. Nobody lost it. It just fell into a gap where both sites assumed the other one was counting it.
Mistake one: assuming one system means one truth
Putting both sites on the same system doesn’t end the arguments. It just gives both sides a shared screen to argue about. If Site A thinks it sent 40 units and Site B thinks it received 36, one system doesn’t tell you who’s right — it only tells you they disagree faster.
What fixes it is a rule about timing. Every transfer gets confirmed at dispatch and again at receipt, and any gap over 24 hours raises a flag the same day, not at month end.
Mistake two: treating transfers as paperwork
Transfers feel like admin. In practice, they’re where money quietly disappears. A truck that sits unloaded over a weekend, a delivery note signed but never entered, a pallet counted at the wrong site — each one is small. Together they add up fast.
- Every transfer gets a same-day dispatch confirmation, no exceptions
- Receiving has 24 hours to confirm or the transfer shows as outstanding
- Anything outstanding over three days goes on a Friday list with a name next to it
Mistake three: running both sites the same way
The busier site and the quieter site need different reorder points. That sounds obvious, but most companies copy the same settings across both because it’s easier than thinking about it.
One site might serve walk-in trade with unpredictable daily demand. The other might feed a handful of large accounts on predictable schedules. Same rules, different reality.
When the wholesaler in question set separate reorder points and separate counting frequencies per site, their total inventory value dropped 14% in five months while service levels stayed flat. They were simply holding the wrong stock in the wrong place.
A separate ERPNext Consulting review of the same business found the biggest single improvement came from something unglamorous: a clear rule that stock in transit belongs to the sending site until the receiving site confirms it. One sentence, agreed once, ended months of finger-pointing.
Before your next stock count, pull a list of everything currently in transit and how long it’s been moving. You’ll probably find a few items older than a week. That list tells you exactly where to start.