Understand your Front Systems setup for your company

Front Systems defines your organization based on three different components which can be useful for an IT manager or Company Admin to understand. 

Company

A company is the top level in Front Systems and can contain several stores, which again can contain several stocks. If you have several stores that needs to share the same product catalog and customer base, then these stores must be within the same company. 

Stores within the same company will be able to send products between them and Company Admins will have overview over all the stores within the Company. 

You see the name of the company in the store selector. The name can be a legal name for a chain, or the name of the chain. It is only visible to users who has access to the company in Front Systems.

Store

A store is the second level in Front Systems. All sales are registered through a store. So if you sell something at the checkout or in the online store, then this is registered as a sale in the respective store where the sale was completed. 

A store share the same product catalog as all other stores within the company, but stock levels will be separated by store. 

All users, except Company Admins, will only have access to the store defined on their user.

The name of the store can be administrated in Portal under Admin > Settings > Store details.

Stock

A stock is the third level in Front Systems. Products that are stocked are stored in a warehouse, which we refer to as a stock. The stock often has the same name as the store, but works as a separate unit. So when you sell a stocked item, it is pulled out of stock, but sold through a store.

Stocks can be shared across stores, and it's therefore possible for a stock not to be attached to a specific store. This can be useful if you have a central warehouse from which goods are sent.

You can move goods between stocks, make purchases for them, reconcile them through a stock count, etc. 

A stock can be either physical or virtual.

A physical stock is also called a salable stock. When you sell items through the POS/Till then the products are pulled out of a physical/salable stock.

A virtual stock is a container for goods that needs to be pulled out of a salable stock such as the POS or an online store. In example; a virtual stock can be "Supplier returns" where you can move defect items that are to be sent back to the supplier. The purpose of this stock is to get the items out of the salable warehouse and log the flow of goods.