Introduction to the multistore and multistorage of prestashop
Since version 1.5, prestashop allows what we call “multistore”, which is nothing more than being able to control, from the same backoffice, several online stores. These stores can be grouped together to share customers, orders and stocks or simply be totally independent of each other, although there will be data that will be common to all of them necessarily, gives us a freedom to plan a structure of stores, either online, physical through our solution “innovacommerce”.
The configuration of a “multistore” environment is not too complex, we only have to take into account certain factors and be very clear about what we want to do before configuring it, since a bad configuration can have the opposite effects to those desired.
The “multi-warehouse” also comes into play. Prestashop, also from version 1.5, allows the use of “advanced stock”, which is nothing more than keeping track of the stock of products and their combinations in warehouses. These warehouses can also belong to the multistore stores. With this, the possible scenarios are varied, but the most common are the following:
- A single store with one or more warehouses
- Several shops with a warehouse each one of them
- Several stores with several warehouses
We should not fall into the error that the “multistore” will allow us to have different prices of products, the multistore is only good for us to have controlled stock and use the inventory tools that incorporates innovacommerce and prestashop. To have different prices of the products is used the “multistore” because you can have different prices for each of the stores configured.
How to configure the multistore
To activate multistore in prestashop, go to the “preferences” -> “General” tab and move to the option that says “enable multistore”. When you hit “save” the “multistore” menu will be enabled in the main menu of Prestashop, at that moment, all our products will be automatically associated to the default store that is created in the system and that will have the name of our store, within the group of “default” stores.
To add new stores or new groups, we will navigate to the “multistore” menu which can be found in the “advanced parameters” – “Multistore” (or Multiple Stores) menu. There we will see our “default” group of stores and depending on it, our main store. To add a new store, click on “add new store” on the top buttons and if we want to add a new group, click on “add new store group”.
Adding a new store to our group of stores
If we want to set up several stores so that we can control them from the backoffice we’ll click on “add new store” which will display the following form:
A store basically consists of a few parameters, a name that identifies it, the group of stores to which it belongs, the category that will be considered “root category” within your category tree and in turn, you must choose which categories will make up the list of categories of this new store. If you select categories that are also associated with another store, in both stores that category will be visible (although their products don’t have to be visible since the products can be registered in one or another store indistinctly, in all the stores at the same time or in a group of stores).
We save the changes with “save”, with this, we will have already created our new shop.
Association of customers and products to the available shops.
When the multistore is activated, we can see in the top menu next to the prestashop logo (and in innovacommerce, in the title bar on the left), a selector where we can choose between “all stores”, “a group of stores” or “a specific store”, depending on the position of this selector, we will be creating items for all stores, for a group or for a specific store. With this selector we can easily control which store we want to work with.
There are managements in which it will not matter in which position the selector is, because inside its management we will have a tree of “associations” to say in which stores we want the specific item to be available, this happens for example for the groups of attributes and attributes or for the tax rules, you will not have to create several items for several stores, but simply create one and say in which stores the item will be available or not.
Creation of warehouses for each store
As we mentioned in the introduction of this article, each store may have one or more stores, it should be borne in mind that the stores will only be used for those products that have the advanced stock activated and that products without this management activated, will not appear in the inventory lists of stores, to be considered products where we enter the units manually.
Each warehouse created must be associated with one or more stores or even a group of stores. It is obvious that if a warehouse is associated to 2 or more stores, it is assumed that it is a centralized warehouse and that the stock we consult will always give us the stock of that warehouse (not of its stores).
To make it clearer, each physical store itself is a “warehouse” and the products displayed there and in the backroom are products that are stored in the warehouse associated with that store, but we repeat that this is solely and exclusively for using the advanced prestashop stock system. If we are not going to use it, it will not be necessary to create stores and each store will have its own manual stock that will be reflected in the products that are associated with that store.
The efficient management of a stock in several shops with or without warehouses.
As mentioned, the storage system of prestashop what helps us is to keep a more accurate control of our stock, such as locations in the warehouse, effective control of inventory because we can see all the movements of items, from entry to sale, among many other options. If we do not use warehouses, this stock is supposed to be manual and will be controlled solely and exclusively from the tab of the items, ie create an item, in its tab “quantities” specify how many units there and ready and if we want to add more units, we must find the product, edit it and add (modify) existing units by the new ones, a much less accurate and therefore less effective, in addition to not being able to have the tools necessary to, for example, develop a valued inventory of stock.
The fact of using or not using warehouses is already at the discretion of the needs of the merchant, here we only expose the functioning of one or the other method, it is not one better than the other nor vice versa, it is simply thought to cover a great number of needs of the merchants.
Innovacommerce, how do I configure each POS for each shop and for each store.
Innovacommerce TPV is designed to sell products from one of your stores and, in turn, from one of your stores (if you have more than one). You can specify in the options of the POS which store we want to subtract stock at the time of sale and in turn on which store will subtract stock. If the store we specify in the POS does not have warehouses, the POS will subtract from the manual stock and will not do anything else, now, if you are subtracting from a store, in addition to subtracting the stock corresponding to that store, it will generate a “warehouse movement” consisting of saying that X product was sold in Y units in the Z order, so, as you can see, the subsequent control is much better and more efficient.
It will not be possible, for example, that a POS subtracts from more than one store or more than one shop, for that, you will have to configure several terminals (even if they are within the same computer), each terminal created can be associated, as we have said, to a store and a warehouse (if it exists).
The storage of products for advanced stock management
For the warehouse system to work, it is not enough just to create the stores and associate them to stores, the products must also be stored, for this, there is an option in innovacommerce to store all the products of a store to a specific warehouse (of that store). It will be impossible to store a product in a store that is not associated with the store to which the product belongs. When a product is stored, it is no longer possible to specify units manually within its file (the fields will appear disabled), and this is because the stock movements of this product will have to be carried out with the option “warehouse movements” within the “stock” menu of prestashop or from the same menu “warehouses” – > “stock movements” in Innovacommerce, where you can specify the units that enter, leave or are transferred from one warehouse to another. To transfer the products, it is obvious that the warehouses involved must belong to the same shop.
