Locations & inventory

A location is a place you hold stock and fulfil orders from — a warehouse, a retail store, or a third-party site. Every tracked product is stocked per location, so before you can record inventory you need at least one location. Sellerlane creates your first location automatically and marks it as the default; from there you add more, set hours, move stock, and audit every change in the inventory history.

Manage locations under Settings → Locations.

Note

The very first location you create is automatically set as the default. A store always has exactly one default location, and you cannot delete it until you promote another location in its place.

Add a location

1. Go to Settings → Locations and select Add location.

2. Under Name, give the location a short, recognisable name (for example Mumbai Warehouse or Bengaluru Store). This is what appears in inventory tables, the location filter, and order routing.

3. Under Address, fill in the address fields — Address, City, State/Province/Region, Postal Code, and Country/Region. Phone and Email are optional but recommended for fulfilment contacts.

4. Optionally add Operating Hours (see below).

5. Save. The location appears in the All Locations list with an Active status.

Note

A store can have up to 10 active locations. Deactivated locations don’t count toward the limit, and neither do the internal locations Sellerlane creates for fulfillment services.

Location settings

Each location has two switches that control how it’s used:

• Fulfill online orders from this location — on by default. Turn it off for locations that hold stock you don’t want used for online orders (for example, a showroom or POS-only stock). Stock there stays visible in inventory but online order routing and shipping quotes skip the location. The default location must always fulfil online orders.
• List this location as a physical store — shows the location on your storefront’s store locator, with its address and operating hours, so customers can find you in person.

Local pickup for the location (whether customers can choose Pick up at checkout, the expected-ready time, and pickup instructions) is configured under Settings → Shipping and delivery, not on the location page.

A few rules the platform enforces as you save:

• Postal code is validated against the country’s zones. If the selected country uses delivery zones, you must pick a zone, and the postal code must match that zone’s allowed prefixes. Codes on a country’s blocked list are rejected.
• Phone must be in international format (a leading + and country code), and Email must be a valid address if you provide them.

Set operating hours

Operating hours are optional, but if you add them the platform validates the whole week at once — this is an all-or-nothing block, not a per-day toggle.

1. On the location, open Operating Hours and select Add (or Edit).

2. Set the open and close time for each day. The open time must be before the close time for every period.

3. Select Save Operating Hours.

Caution

If you choose to set hours, you must provide hours for all seven days of the week, and periods within a day cannot overlap or repeat. A partial week, an overlapping block, or a close-before-open time is rejected on save.

Change the default location

The default location is where stock and fulfilment fall back to when nothing more specific applies. To move the default:

1. Go to Settings → Locations.

2. In the Default Location card (shown once you have more than one location), select Change.

3. Pick the location you want as the new default. The previous default is demoted automatically — there is always exactly one.

Note

Only an active location can be the default. If a location is inactive, reactivate it first, then set it as the default. The default location’s status toggle is locked on the list so you can never accidentally deactivate it.

Activate, deactivate, or delete a location

Use the status switch on the All Locations list, or the action buttons on the location’s detail page, to Activate, Deactivate, or Delete a location. The All / Active / Inactive tabs and the search box help you find the right one in a long list.

Deactivating a location

You can deactivate a location that still has stock. The inventory isn’t lost — the quantities stay on the location, remain visible in inventory views, and you can still adjust them manually or move them out with a transfer. What changes is that the stock stops being sellable: a deactivated location is skipped by online order routing, shipping quotes, and pickup.

Deactivation is blocked only while the location has work in progress. You can’t deactivate a location when:

• it’s the default location — promote another location first;
• it has open fulfillment orders waiting to be fulfilled from it;
• items there are reserved by active checkouts (stock held by carts mid-checkout);
• an in-flight transfer uses it as origin or destination (Ready to ship or In transit); or
• it belongs to a fulfillment service — remove the service instead.

If you’d rather not leave stock stranded, the deactivate dialog offers to transfer inventory out first and links straight to a transfer pre-filled with the location’s stock.

Caution

Deactivating a location cancels any open, unpaid checkouts that involve it, so buyers can’t complete a purchase against stock that’s no longer sellable. Paid orders are unaffected.

Deleting a location

Delete is available after a location is deactivated. Deletion is soft — your inventory history is preserved — but the location’s name is freed up, so you can reuse it for a new location. You cannot delete the default location; set another location as default first.

Stock a product at a location

Inventory levels live on the product, not the location. You set per-location quantities while creating or editing a product:

1. Open a product and go to its Inventory step.

2. Turn on Track Inventory. Each location appears as a row under Inventory by Location.

3. Enter the Available quantity for each location. Available is the count buyers can purchase.

4. Save the product.

If you have no locations yet, the Inventory step shows No locations found with a Create a location link — create one, then return to set quantities.

Tip

Products with variants track stock per variant, and you set those quantities in the Variants step rather than on the product. Digital products are not stock-tracked. Bundles can either carry their own stock or derive availability from their component products.

Inventory states

Each location row breaks the count into buckets so you always know what is genuinely sellable versus set aside:

• Available — units a buyer can purchase right now.
• Committed — units already promised to placed orders (read-only; the platform maintains this).
• Unavailable — units held back, expandable into Reserved, Damaged, Safety Stock, and Quality Control.
• Incoming — units on their way to this location on an in-transit transfer (read-only; it isn’t editable and isn’t counted in On hand — it becomes Available when you receive the transfer).
• On hand — the total physically at the location: Available + Committed + Unavailable.

Use the breakdown (the chevron next to Unavailable) to park stock in Safety Stock, mark Damaged units, or hold goods for Quality Control without making them sellable.

Inventory history (the ledger)

Every change to a stock level is recorded as a ledger entry, so you can always answer “who changed this number, when, and why”. Open the history from the Inventory step — View All History, or History on a single location row.

The history table shows, per change:

Column	What it means
Date Time	When the change happened (in your store’s timezone)
Location	Which location the stock moved at
Bucket	Available, Committed, Incoming, Reserved, Damaged, Safety Stock, or Quality Control
Change	The delta, + added or - removed
Before / After	The quantity before and after the change
Source	What triggered it (see below)
Performed By	The staff member who made the change, or System for automatic changes
Note	Any note attached to the adjustment

Each entry is tagged with a Source so manual edits are distinguishable from automatic ones:

• Initial Stock — the quantity you set when first tracking the product.
• Manual Update — a stock edit made by you or a staff member.
• Order — stock committed or released by an order.
• Checkout — stock reserved or released during checkout.
• Transfer — stock reserved, moved, or received by an inventory transfer.

Filter the ledger by bucket, source, one or more locations, and a date range, and the summary cards at the top tally Total Added, Total Removed, and Total Changes for the current view.

How locations connect to the rest of your store

• Order routing decides which location an order is assigned to fulfil from, drawing on your active locations and their stock. See Order routing.
• Shipping profiles and rates can be scoped by location and zone — see Shipping & checkout.
• Fulfilling orders draws down Committed stock at the assigned location when you ship. See Fulfilling orders.
• Inventory transfers move stock between locations (or in from a supplier) and drive the Incoming column. See Inventory transfers.
• Purchase orders record what you’ve bought from suppliers before it arrives. See Purchase orders.

Troubleshooting

• “Cannot delete the default location.” Set another location as the default in Settings → Locations, then delete the old one.
• “Cannot deactivate this location.” Check the blockers: it may be the default location, have open fulfillment orders, hold stock reserved by active checkouts, sit on an in-flight transfer, or belong to a fulfillment service. Stock alone doesn’t block deactivation.
• A location’s Incoming number won’t change when I edit stock. Incoming is maintained by transfers and can’t be edited directly — receive or cancel the transfer instead.
• “Operating hours must include all seven days.” Either remove hours entirely or fill in every day with non-overlapping periods.
• Postal code rejected on save. Confirm the location’s zone and that the code matches the zone’s prefixes; check it isn’t on the country’s blocked list.
• A product won’t let me enter stock. Make sure Track Inventory is on, the product isn’t a digital product, and at least one location exists.

Next steps

Add products

Set per-location stock while creating a product. See Add products.

Inventory transfers

Move stock between locations or receive it from suppliers. See Inventory transfers.

Purchase orders

Record supplier orders and receive them via transfers. See Purchase orders.

Order routing

Control which location fulfils each order. See Order routing.

Fulfilling orders

Pick, pack, and ship from a location. See Fulfilling orders.

Shipping & checkout

Scope rates and profiles by location and zone. See Shipping & checkout.