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What we found while building DockingWare, dated as we found it. Newest first.

  • One product, more than one warehouse

    Stock is kept per warehouse: one row per product and warehouse, with existing stock stamped to Main. Once a second warehouse exists, a movement has to say which building it belongs to, and the location on the movement is what says it.

  • When the case size changes, the pieces stay the same

    A pack factor converts the unit you handle into the unit you count in. Change the factor and stored cases can read as more pieces with no movement at all. Here is how the fold keeps the piece total honest, and why every movement records what was actually entered.

  • Where the price on the line comes from

    A sales order line should never have a price nobody can explain. Here is the order the system tries, from private customer price to catalog, how quantity breaks move the price, what a pack price's minimum quantity means, how formula prices work, why the line names its source while you price it, and why a typed price is kept.

  • Double-entry for physical units

    Accounting solved this 500 years ago: every movement gets a witness, and the books must balance. Most inventory software still runs on single entry. Here is what the double-entry version looks like, and the two bugs it caught in our own code.

  • Ninety-six pieces the system refused to pick

    A wholesale order needed two pieces. The pallet held ninety-six of them, stacked as four cases, and the warehouse refused the pick. The bug was one comparison written in the wrong unit.

  • We built a tool to catch inventory lies. The first thing it caught was ours.

    A reconciliation report that counted everything alike was hiding ninety real disagreements between our own ledger and our own stock. Here is what we found, how old it was, and why we are not quietly correcting it.

  • You cannot scan what is not there

    We shipped a feature that let a picker record a shortage from the floor, and gated it behind scanning the product that was missing. The handheld had carried the same mistake for a day before anyone noticed.