Open Source ERP Academy

Posting and Financial Analysis of Shared Physical Warehouses

The purpose of this page is to help you understand how to solve an challenge proposed by an ERP Academy member. Here is the question:

I have multiple organizations that share multiple warehouses. I want to be able to perform financial analysis based on the warehouse independent of (or spanning across multiple) organizations. How do I do this in iDempiere?

The challenge with this situation is that iDempiere Warehouses are owned by a single iDempiere Organization. This means that you need to create each physical warehouse in each iDempiere Organization. If multiple Organizations share the same physical warehouse, then you will need to duplicate the warehouses in each iDempiere Organization. Here is an example with 4 physical warehouses and multiple Organizations sharing them to demonstrate. Note that WH1 is repeated multiple times (one for each Organization that uses that warehouse). How do you solve this in iDempiere?
  1. I believe the answer is to create an entity (say a Distribution Center) concept in iDempiere to represent your physical warehouses. Then, update each iDempiere warehouse to point to its Distribution Center. Said another way, the Distribution Center represents your physical warehouses and the iDempiere Warehouse represents your logical or virtual warehouses inside your physical warehouse.
  2. Log in as System Admin to create a new window/table called Distribution Center (name, description, etc...)
  3. Log in as GW Admin to create a Distribution Center record for each physical Warehouse you have.
  4. Log in as System Admin to Add the Distribution Center field to the Warehouse and Locators window => Warehouse tab. Make it mandatory.
  5. Log in as System Admin to Update all the documents that post to contain this field. See below for example. Note: you can add the Distribution Center to a document as a Column SQL (ColSQL) to make the propagation logic much easier.
  6. Use these instructions to add Distribution Center to the fields that post to the GL.
  7. Test a couple of documents to confirm you can see the Distribution Center in your postings.
  8. Note: Inventory Move will require special posting logic because each line will have up to two Distribution Centers if you allow the Inventory Move document to transfer product between them.
  9. Tie/tag each iDempiere Warehouse to the Distribution Center (physical warehouse). In the above example, you would update each WH1-x record to point to the same Distribution Center.
Example I created an example of the above scenario. Here are the downloads for the below scenario. Here are the steps to deploy and play:
  1. Pack in the 01_SYSTEM....zip pack using the System Admin role
  2. Reset your Cache (Cache Reset process)
  3. Pack in the 02_GardenWorld...zip pack in using the GardenWorld Admin role
  4. Restart the iDempiere Application Server
  5. Create a GardenWorld => Distribution Center record
  6. Update a Warehouse record to point to your newly created Distribution Center
  7. Create and complete a Purchase Order using the desired Warehouse
  8. Create, complete and post a Material Receipt for the newly created Purchase Order
  9. View the posting to see the Distribution Center.
Notes: