Managing Locations & Zones within gaiia

Overview

When it comes to managing inventory, knowing where your inventory is at all times plays a very important role. gaiia operates with the notion of Locations and Zones, which may be better known as Inventory Location and Sub-Inventory Location, to manage inventory.

In this article, we’ll be covering what Locations and Zones are, how you can configure them, and how they’ll affect your overall inventory management.

What is a Location?

A Location in gaiia serves as a broad designator for where your CPE currently is. This could be named Primary Warehouse, or Overstock, or RMA’d. The naming conventions should typically be in line with your operational setup, as no one Location configuration likely works for everyone.

Nested within these Locations are Zones, a breakdown of the inventory by Model, and by individual item type with their unique identifier.

What is a Zone?

A Zone operates as a method to more granularly track where your CPE may be within that Location. For example, you could have Primary Warehouse as your Location, and your Zones could be: Main Floor, To Be Tested and Backroom, each possibly giving you more information as to the state or whereabouts of the CPE.

Each Zone will also denote the quantity of the model that is within it, providing you with needed visibility into what currently resides there.

Configuring a Location

To configure a Location, start by navigating to Inventory > Locations and click + Add Location. From here, a modal will appear and you’ll have to populate the following information step by step:

1. Location Name – When naming your Location, think of high-level of where that CPE is, and possibly the state of the CPE residing there. Primary Warehouse is a good one. Something like Main Floor, however, would be better served as a Zone within the Location.
2. Address Information – As an optional field, you can include an address of where this Location physically is.
3. Contact Information – Lastly, as another optional field, you can provide the contact information of someone, or someones, at this Location. This may help if you’re bringing a delivery or picking up inventory, so you can easily get in touch with them.

Once that’s done, your new Location will appear in the list of Locations.

Configuring a Zone

Once you’ve got your Location configured, you can now work on configuring your Zones. Click into your Location where you want to create a Zone.

From here, simply click + Add Zone to prompt the modal to appear. There will be three key fields here to populate:

1. Name – This should follow the same type of rules that you followed to name your Location. Choose a name that denotes either the whereabouts and, if desired, the state of the CPE. An example would be: 2nd floor - New Inventory
2. Location – If you’ve accidentally clicked on the wrong Location, no worries. From here, choose the Location that you want the Zone to be added to.
3. Zone Type – Select between Available or Unavailable for your Zone Type (for more information, read below).

Once that’s done, your new Zone will appear in the Zones section of the respective Location.

Zone Type

During your Zone creation process, you have to determine whether or not this Zone is Available or Unavailable. This choice does have impacts, but primarily so if you’re using gaiia with the Fulfillment Module.

1. Available – When a Zone Type is set as Available, two things are possible:
   1. This inventory will be considered in the overall Available Inventory value as depicted on the Inventory Homepage.
   2. This inventory can be used by the fulfillment module to fulfill orders.
2. Unavailable – When a Zone Type is set as Unavailable, two things happen:
   1. This inventory will not be considered in the overall Available Inventory value as depicted on the Inventory Homepage.
   2. This inventory cannot be used by the fulfillment module to fulfill orders.

Taking those into consideration, set your Zone Type as desired. These can also be adjusted after the Zones creation if you've incorrectly set it. Simply click the Ellipsis Menu > Edit > Change Zone Type.

If you’re heavily using gaiia Inventory module as an Inventory Management tool, it’s recommended to become familiar with the Available/Unavailable notions to ensure your Available Inventory is accurately reflected.