Locations is one of those Zoho features that looks like a simple settings toggle and turns out to touch almost everything: opening stock, transfer orders, invoice numbering, and half a dozen reports. Enable it without understanding the hierarchy first, and you'll end up restructuring locations later, which is far more work than planning it upfront. This post covers exactly what the feature does, how to turn it on, how to use it day to day, and the specific reports it unlocks.
If you're deciding whether you need Zoho Books, Zoho Inventory, or both, our Zoho Inventory vs Books Items guide is worth reading first. For a retail-specific walkthrough of Locations alongside item setup and invoice templates, see our Zoho Books and Inventory for retailers guide. This post goes deeper on Locations alone.
What Locations Actually Is
Locations replaced the older Branches feature in both Zoho Books and Zoho Inventory, and it categorises transactions, manages inventory, and tracks financial performance across the different physical or operational divisions of your business. There are two distinct types, and the hierarchy between them matters.
Business Location
The primary level in the hierarchy, functioning as a head office over its associated branches, warehouses, and transaction stock. A Business Location can be independent or semi-independent under the same legal entity, generates its own branch-wise reports, and can have staff assigned to it as a default so their transactions post automatically to the right place.
Warehouse Location
Used specifically for stock tracking. A Warehouse Location can be associated with a Business Location, but it cannot have its own sub-locations, so it always sits at the bottom of the hierarchy under a Business Location, never above one.
You can build up to five levels deep. A typical structure is Head Office → Regional Business Location → Store Business Location → Warehouse Location, but most small and mid-size operations only need two or three levels. Plan the structure before you start creating locations, since reorganising a live hierarchy after transactions exist is significantly more work than getting it right on day one.
Business Locations can nest under each other; a Warehouse Location never sits above one.
How to Enable Locations
Step 1: Turn on the feature
Go to Settings, select Locations under Organization, and click Enable Locations. Your current organisation automatically becomes the Head Office, or Primary Location, and every transaction that already exists gets mapped to it.
Step 2: Understand the warning before you click
Once you enable Locations, you cannot disable it. You can delete an individual location record later, or mark one inactive, but the feature itself stays on for the organisation permanently once switched on. If you're still evaluating whether you need it, do that evaluation in a trial or sandbox organisation first.
Step 3: Create your locations
Go to Settings → Locations → Add Location. Select a Location Type (Business or Warehouse), enter a name, and if it's a child location, toggle This is a Child Location and select the Parent Location from the dropdown. For a Business Location, also set the Primary Contact and the Transaction Number Series, since this is what determines how invoices and other documents from that location get numbered.
Where Locations Apply
Once enabled, Locations shows up as a field across a specific set of modules, not the entire application. In Zoho Inventory, the feature is supported in: Opening Stock (for items, composite items, and item groups), Inventory Adjustments, Transfer Orders, Bundles, Packages, Purchase Receives, Sales Returns, Sales Receives, and Back Orders. On top of that base, Locations also unlocks a set of advanced inventory functions: Bin Locations for organising stock within specific bins, Picklists for order fulfilment, Move Orders for tracking inventory movement, and Putaways for streamlining stock placement.
Location-Wise Inventory: Moving Stock Between Locations
With Locations enabled, every item's stock is tracked per location rather than as one company-wide number. Opening stock gets entered per location at setup, and from there, stock moves between locations through Transfer Orders.
Creating a Transfer Order
A Transfer Order records a stock movement with a source warehouse, a destination warehouse, and a quantity, along with an optional reason for the transfer. The order also shows current stock at both the source and destination at the time of transfer, so you can see the before-and-after position without switching screens.
Initiate Transfer vs Transfer and Receive
You have two ways to complete a transfer. Initiate Transfer sets the order's status to In Transit, and someone has to manually record receipt at the destination once the stock physically arrives, useful when transfers take real time to move between locations. Transfer and Receive completes the movement instantly, useful for recording a transfer that already happened or for locations close enough that transit time isn't a meaningful gap.
Reports Available: Zoho Inventory
| Report | What it shows |
|---|---|
| Warehouse Details | Stock position of each item across all warehouses: quantity ordered, committed, received, dispatched, and available. Use it to compare stock levels between locations and spot imbalances before they become a stockout. |
| Bin Location Details | Stock held in each bin within a warehouse: item name, bin name, status, in quantity, out quantity, and balance quantity. Useful for verifying exact stock placement inside a larger warehouse. |
| Transfer Order Summary | An aggregated view of all inter-warehouse transfer orders, showing source, destination, and quantity moved, giving you a single place to audit stock movement history across locations. |
Beyond these location-specific reports, Zoho Inventory's general Inventory Details, Inventory Valuation Summary, Product Sales, and Product Purchase reports remain available and can be reviewed alongside the location reports for a fuller picture of stock and sales performance.
Reports Available: Zoho Books
Profit and Loss, compared by location
Go to Reports → Profit and Loss, click Customize Report, and under Compare, select Compare Based on Branches. Choose the locations you want to compare and run the report. This puts each location's profit performance side by side in one view, rather than requiring a separate report per branch.
Advanced Filters by location on other reports
Most reports support filtering by location through Customize Report → General → Advanced Filters, selecting Branch or Location as the parameter and choosing which ones to include. Not every report supports this, so check the Advanced Filters option is present before assuming a specific report can be split this way.
Showing the location column
On reports where you want to see every location's figures in one table rather than filtering to one at a time, use Customize Report → Show or Hide Columns and select the Branches or Location column, then run the report.
Dashboard, filtered by location
The Zoho Books dashboard has an All Locations (or All Branches) dropdown in the top-left corner. Selecting a specific location filters the dashboard's overview figures to just that location's performance.
Setup Order: Getting Locations Right the First Time
- Map your hierarchy on paper first. Decide which physical points are Business Locations and which are Warehouse Locations, and how many levels deep you genuinely need, before creating a single record.
- Enable Locations in a trial organisation if you're not certain yet, since the decision to enable can't be reversed on your live company file.
- Create your Business Locations first, setting Primary Contact and Transaction Number Series for each, since these are the top of the hierarchy everything else attaches to.
- Add Warehouse Locations under each Business Location that needs separate stock tracking within it.
- Enter opening stock per location accurately at go-live, since every report from that point forward builds on this starting position.
- Assign a default location to each staff user so day-to-day transactions post to the right place automatically without manual selection at a busy till or counter.
- Build your location-wise reports and dashboard views once there's a few weeks of real transaction data to check them against.
Frequently Asked Questions
Where to Go From Here
For a retail-specific walkthrough that puts Locations alongside item setup, Books-Inventory integration, and invoice templates, see our Zoho Books and Inventory for retailers guide. For the base decision between Zoho Inventory and Books' own Items module, see our Zoho Inventory vs Books Items guide.
We set up multi-location structures in Zoho Books and Inventory.
From planning the Business and Warehouse Location hierarchy to opening stock, transfer orders, and the location-wise reports you actually need, we configure Zoho around how your business really operates across its locations.
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