How can I manage bin location effectively on Shopify?

[LuisaP]

It's totally crazy that Shopify doesn't offer a native, simple, bin location management solution : No fields to store a bin location and have it appear on an invoice or packing slip !!!

We have tried 2 solutions

1 - Modify the SKUs to include the bin location causes a problem when the location needs to be changed : The synchronization of the product between several stores is lost and Sales history, statistics are lost

2 - Creating a metafield for the stock location is very easy but it is impossible to include this metafield in any template 

Seriously Shopify, how do you pretend to make the work of merchants easier by forgetting such an essential function. The only solution seems to use an ERP but in this configuration platforms such as Magento are more efficient.

A simple solution?

PS : We started with 200 SKU with shopify but now need to manage 3 to 5.000 SKU for 2 online store and a 500sqm warehouse. We have no choice if we don't want to see our employees walking as ghosts searching for a product in our warehouse.

[David871]

Hello LuisaP , 

I would suggest you to look for and ERP software that can be integrated with shopify. 

second option is to change the SKU of the product by bin location 

than the packing slip will show for example:

Product: Note Book Black Squares aisle 5 bin d 

SKU: A5-NB-BLKSQ-D

Magento - Maybe there is easy solution for location but all other very complicated 

[LuisaP]

Hello

Using the SKU as a bid location is a bad solution. The SKU is a SKU. If you use it in another way you get bad effects : false statistics, bad synchronisation...

Most of the time we don't need a warehouse management software... A field we could use in a template is enough.

[Shay]

Hi @LuisaP,

Thank you for this feedback about the metafields function and trying to add it to an invoice on your store. 

I did some digging into this myself and I can confirm, it is not an easy thing to do at this time. The metafields do create a liquid object that can be referenced within the theme code, but not in our apps like Order Printer. 

From what I can see it looks like an app developer could customize their own order printer app to reference metafields, if they don't already, or you could hire a theme developer to assist in making your metafields into line item properties, which could then be referenced in apps like Order Printer. 

I've shared your feedback on this process to our developers and I hope we can include this option in our own order printer app in the near future. 

[LuisaP]

Thank you

After thinking about it we will develop our own application because we need

- To add a bin location code for each product to generate picking lists according to the location of the products

- To add other fields on each product related to the sale of alcohol and generate listings for our tax representative

- To add a supplier SKU Code to easily generate purchase forms and listing to show where the inbound goods must be placed in the warehouse

[bwardirl]

Did you mind to find a solution? I would be very interested to hear if you found an app/service to meet your needs?

[LuisaP · Accepted solution]

Hi

Yes, we created metafields for all of our needs (including bin location) and a developper inserted the bin location field in a template

[shaneneal]

Wondering how you were able to display these on the picking template?

[MOTOSTUFF]

Hi, Can you share the developer you worked with and about how much it cost. Thanks

[bwardirl]

Is there any updates on this front, we would like to have similar functionality to that requested by the original poster. Thanks!

[kingstore]

Hi @LuisaP, I'm sure it's frustrating to try and solve this within the native Shopify platform. Truth is, Shopify is a phenomenal eCommerce platform, and does very little on the inventory management side since this opens up a full can of worms that I'm sure Shopify has thought long and hard about and ultimately relies on partners like us to build apps to solve these issues.

That said, we created a solution that I think would work well for you. SKUSavvy is a warehouse management system built for Shopify merchants. Think of it as Shopify inventory on steroids which will provide all the bin location storage, purchasing, order management, and pick-pack-ship across one or multiple warehouses. It uses a visual warehouse interface so your staff will know exactly where the item is on a map during put-away, inventory visibility, and picking operations. All the information will be relayed back to Shopify (customers, orders, inventory, locations, order status, tracking) so that all your inventory can be quickly tracked and managed within SKUSavvy. 

The benefits of using SKUSavvy as a merchant include the full lifecycle management of product inventory, as well as the ability to fulfill orders directly including purchasing and printing shipping labels, and the pricing is directly correlated with your order count with your first 50 orders free monthly then just $0.10-$0.19 per order. 

Warehouse layout tool for visual pick pack ship and put-away

A visual layout of your warehouse for pick pack ship and check-in

[LuisaP]

Thank you but for now we only need a simple solution which could be using a metafield in a template. t seems very simple but obviously it is not for Shopify staff.

We don't need a warehouse management system... maybe later.

[oddzac]

did you ever come up with a solution for row code / bin #   ?  currently we are usings tags and it doesn't look great on packaging list and such 

[kingstore]

@oddzac curious if you've taken a look at SKUSavvy to solve this problem. It's built around visual bin locations so you know where your product is and during picks, you will have a visualization of each bin to go to and how many units are needed for an order or batch of orders. 

Allocation to bins upon PO receipt is done with this same visual bin location placement. 

[oddzac]

too much stuff for what we need, thanks though 

[brdata]

Hi @LuisaP,

You could try our Pick List app.

https://apps.shopify.com/picklist

($5 per month with a 15 day free trial)

We allow sorting / grouping products and orders in your picklist. If you have product locations or bins in metafields you can order your picklist by any product / variant metafield to reduce your pick path.

Let us know if you have any questions or feature requests.

Thanks,

picklist@brdatasolutions.com

Pick List Support

[DavidDB1]

Hi,

iPacky, and order checking app, has bin locations. Even multiple, and you can sort on this in picking list and order check.

[frustratedsfly]

How about putting your bin locations in the Tags field? That's we're doing and it seems to be working well.  

[DavidDB1]

For many, that is not an acceptable solution. They might end up with thousands of tags, and which tag is the bin location since many shops are using multiple tags for other stuff.

It will also not cover when using multiple Shopify locations, alternative bin locations, or sorting on bin location.

Much better to look at apps like iPacky.

[Wale_Adetona]

Has anyone tried Zoho Inventory, as I'm in the same boat, just a simple 2 person business starting, no need for a large warehouse solution, just some simple to assign a SKU to a certain bin.

https://www.zoho.com/us/inventory/

[Funny1]

Zoho Inventory does not have bin locations. They had been promising it for many years but many users are still waiting....

[kingstore]

Zoho is a very lightweight inventory management system. You can replace
this with a solution like SKUSavvy.com that will provide a 3D visualization
of all your bins to provide pick routes. It works seamlessly with Shopify
across all channels and POS.