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Multi-organisation trade

Multi-organisation trade is what happens when more than one organisation shares a warehouse, or trades stock with a counterpart it doesn't share a site with at all. Two roles run through everything below, and which one you hold decides which of these surfaces you can even see.

Two roles​

A facility operator runs a shared warehouse: it controls the site's location layout and is the only organisation that can run a commingled count there. A brand tenant holds its own stock at a warehouse someone else operates, tracked separately from every other organisation's stock at the same site. Neither role changes what you can see on its own — visibility on a shared site follows which organisations you personally belong to, not the role any of them holds. See how shared warehouses work and who sees what.

What makes trade possible​

Two things have to exist before stock moves between organisations at all: a shared anchor linking each organisation's matching variant to one physical product, and a trading relationship between the two organisations. An anchor can be created in the app, by whichever organisation curates it, or approved from a request when two onboarding products turn out to share a barcode. A trading relationship is different — it's set up for you when your organisations are onboarded, and there's no button in Yessort to create, pause or terminate one.

Once they exist, one organisation can publish supply to a counterpart, whose stock the counterpart can then sell as if it were its own, through the ordinary order flow. Stock also changes hands without any publishing at all: a transfer that can't be covered from its own organisation's stock draws the shortfall from a counterpart's, and a customer order can do the same against published supply. Either way it's recorded as an ownership flip — a change of owner with nothing physically moving.

Two settlements, kept apart​

Two features share the word "settlement," and they don't do the same thing. Intercompany settlement nets a live balance between two trading organisations and posts real invoices, bills or credit notes to Xero. Operator settlement periods are the facility operator's own record of what commingled-count rounding cost each brand tenant over a date range, and that record never reaches Xero — it's for the operator's own use, and brand tenants can't see it at all.

Concepts​

  • How shared warehouses work — the facility operator, the brand tenant, and what each can see and do.
  • Anchors — the shared identity that lets several organisations recognise the same physical product.
  • Commingled stock — several organisations' stock in the same location, and what the Owners figure actually counts.
  • Trading relationships — the agreement that gates everything cross-organisation between two organisations.
  • How supply links work — one organisation's stock becoming sellable by a counterpart.
  • How ownership flips work — the two ways stock changes hands, and why a sale flip doesn't reverse on a return.
  • Intercompany settlement — the running balance between two trading organisations that posts to Xero.
  • Operator settlement periods — the facility operator's own record of commingled-count rounding, which never posts anywhere.

How-to​

Reference​