Move stock between the shop and the godown

17 October 2026

A lot of small shops in Nepal keep the cartons in a godown, a back room, or a second floor, and the pieces on the counter. The customer sees an empty shelf. The owner knows there are six cartons "somewhere." By the time someone walks to the godown, the count in the notebook is for the shop only, or for both places added together, and neither number is the one you need in order to reorder.

Two places do not need two catalogues. They need one item, and a quantity in each place.

Name the places, then stop

Call them what the staff already call them: Shop, and Godown. If you have a second counter, name that too. Do not create a location for every shelf. A location is a place you would send someone to fetch a carton, not a row in an aisle.

Each item still exists once, with one selling price and one unit. The quantity is what changes by place. Ten pieces in the shop and forty in the godown are fifty on hand, and the reorder decision usually cares about the fifty. The cashier cares about the ten. Both numbers have to be visible, or the cashier will tell a customer you are out while the godown is full.

Receive a supplier delivery into the place the cartons actually land. If they land in the godown, the shop quantity does not move yet. Adding them to "the shop" because that is the only location you created is how the counter looks stocked in the software and empty in the room.

A transfer is not a sale and not a new purchase

When a carton moves from the godown to the shop, the business still owns it. You have not sold it, and you have not bought it again. Write a transfer: item, quantity, from Godown, to Shop, and the date someone actually carried it. The godown goes down by that quantity. The shop goes up by the same quantity. The total on hand does not change.

If the numbers are not equal, the goods are still in between, or they were lost on the way. Do not "adjust" both sides until you know which. A transfer you forget to write is the usual case: the shop sells pieces it does not show, and the godown still shows cartons that left yesterday.

Count the fast movers in both places on the same day when you do the weekly check described in tracking stock for a small shop. Counting the shop on Sunday and the godown on Friday makes the total meaningless.

What this is not

A second location is not a second company, and it is not a second set of accounts. Sales, VAT, and who owes you still belong to the shop as one business. If you only have a counter and a shelf behind it, you do not need this yet. One location is simpler, and a lightweight set of records is enough until the goods really live in two rooms.

Where this sits in ERPesque

ERPesque keeps stock by location. You sell and receive against the location where the goods are. Stock transfers move a quantity from one location to another without creating a sale or a purchase bill. Low stock still applies, so you can see a counter that is thin even when the godown is not. The stock ledger and the inventory valuation report are there when you want the movement or the value on paper, as CSV or PDF.

Download ERPesque from Google Play, add Shop and Godown as locations, and record the next carton that moves as a stock transfer.

Get ERPesque on Google Play

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