How locations work: buildings, areas, shelves and bins

Locations tell you where every item is. They nest inside each other like your real storage: a building holds rooms and shelves, a shelf holds bins or boxes, and each item sits in a numbered slot in its bin.

The kinds of location

You don't need every level. A small setup can be one building with shelves and bins. Items can also sit right on a shelf.

Codes

Every location has a short code, like SHOP, A or B27. Codes use letters, numbers and dashes, up to 16 characters, and no two locations in your shop can share one. The code is what goes on the printed label, what you type or scan to find a bin, and how Lotmaster names it: a bin with the code B27 is "Bin B27".

Slots

Inside a bin or box, each item gets a numbered slot. Lotmaster shows where an item is as the bin's code and its slot, so the third item in B27 is at B27-03. A new item takes the next free slot, and you can pick a slot yourself when you move a single item. Only one item can be in a slot at a time. Items on a shelf, in a room or in a building have no slot.

How full a bin is

Give a bin a size in Holds about and its tile on the Locations page fills up as you add items, with a key for Has room, Filling up and Nearly full. Leave it blank if you don't want to track it. Lotmaster warns you when a move would put a bin over, but still lets you do it.

The Locations page

Open it from the More tab on a phone, or Locations in the sidebar on a computer.

• On a phone, pick a shelf from the row of names, then tap a bin to open it.
• On a computer, the shelves are listed down the side. Pick a bin on the map and it opens beside it, with Print label and Open bin.

Type in the search box to jump to a bin by its code. If any items have no location, the page shows how many need a bin, with a link to put them away.

Opening a bin shows what's in it, with Add here, In inventory and Print label.

Change or remove a location

Open the location and tap Edit (it says Edit bin, Edit shelf and so on). You can change its Code, Kind, what it's Inside, Holds about and its Order on the shelf map. Changing Inside moves it, and everything inside it moves too.

To remove one, tap Remove bin (or Remove shelf and so on) at the bottom of the same page. Any locations inside it have to be moved or removed first. Items still in it are kept and show as needing a bin. Removing can't be undone.

Storage sites and your plan

A storage site is a building at the top of the tree.

Rooms, shelves, bins and boxes inside a building don't count, and nor do mobile locations. So on any plan you can have one building plus a show van or show cases. If you're at your limit, adding another building is refused with a note about upgrading. The free trial has Pro's limits.

Show vans and cases

For stock that travels to shows, add a Mobile (shows) location (for example SHOW) and a box inside it for each case. Items in a case get slots like any other box, so you know exactly which case to open.

Related

• Quick start: set up your shelves and bins in one go
• Print bin labels and scan them
• Move one item, several, or a whole box
• Plans and what each includes