Moving stock between branches without losing it

Branch A is out of a fast-selling item; branch B has eight. Someone puts four in a car. Three weeks later the stock numbers at both branches are wrong and nobody can say why.

A transfer is three states, not one

Requested. Branch A asks, or head office instructs.

In transit. Stock has left A and not arrived at B. This state is where systems differ most: a good one holds the stock in a transit location so it belongs to neither branch and is not lost from the total.

Received. Branch B confirms what actually arrived — which may not be what was sent.

A system that decrements A and increments B in one action has no in-transit state, which means any discrepancy is invisible and unattributable.

The discipline

1. Raise the transfer in the system before the stock moves. Not after, not from memory.
2. Print or attach a transfer note listing items and quantities. The person carrying the box has the document.
3. Receive against the transfer at the destination, counting what actually arrived.
4. Record any discrepancy at receipt, not later. Four sent, three arrived is a finding to investigate today.
5. Both branch managers see the transfer in their own reports.

The common failures

Verbal transfers. "I told Mohammed to take four." No record, no accountability, and two branch stock figures now wrong.

Receiving blind. Confirming the transfer without counting. This makes the in-transit state pointless.

Transfers used to hide variances. A branch that is short before a count transfers stock in and back out afterwards. A good audit trail makes this visible; a system without one does not.

No transit location. Stock that is neither here nor there, and if a box is lost, no report shows it.

Valuation

When stock moves between branches, its cost moves with it. This matters for two reasons: branch-level gross margin is only meaningful if cost transfers correctly, and your accountant needs inventory valued consistently.

Agree the treatment once — usually transfer at cost — and make sure the system does it automatically rather than relying on someone to remember.

Requesting rather than pushing

The better pattern in multi-branch retail ispull, not push: the branch that needs stock raises the request, and the branch with surplus fulfils it. This works better than head office pushing stock because the branch knows its own demand, and because a branch that asked for something is accountable for selling it.

The reports to watch

• Open transfers older than X days. The single most useful number here. Anything in transit for more than a day between city branches needs a phone call.
• Transfer discrepancies by route. If A to B is consistently short, the problem has a location.
• Transfer volume by product. Constant transfers of one product mean your ordering, not your logistics, is wrong — branch B is over-ordering and branch A under-ordering.
• Transfers immediately before or after a stock count. Worth a look, always.

Which systems support it

Per our August 2026 audit, supply chain functions including transfers are present in Wameed, NCR, Oracle, Rewaa and Odoo, and absent in Foodics, Marn, Revel, Geidea, Sapaad and Hala.

If you have more than one location and your system has no transfer function, stock is moving between your branches on WhatsApp — and your branch-level reporting is fiction.

Wameed handles transfers with an in-transit state, receipt confirmation and discrepancy recording; see theinventory feature.