After installing and activating Product Locations, you are ready to set up your first warehouse locations and assign stock to them. This page gives you a clear, step-by-step path so you can begin using Product Locations with confidence.

After Activation

When Product Locations is activated, you will see a welcome screen with two choices:

• Start Using Product Locations
  Opens the main interface where you can begin working with locations and stock.
• Go to Settings
  Opens the Product Locations settings page where you can choose optional preferences such as default location, cost field detection, and snapshot frequency.

Product Locations will also create a few example locations (e.g., Los Angeles, New York, London). These are provided so you can see how locations work before adding your own. You may delete them at any time.
If you prefer, you can immediately create your own locations instead of using the sample ones.

Step 1: Create Your Locations

Product Locations works best when you set up your warehouse structure first.
Go to:

WooCommerce → Product Locations → Locations

Here you can add:

• Parent locations (your main warehouses)
• Sub-locations such as areas, shelves, or rows

Each location receives a unique location code generated from your input.
If you already know your warehouse layout, you can generate many sub-locations at once using the built-in generator.

If you created the sample locations during activation, you can delete them now and replace them with your own structure.

Step 2: Prepare Your Products for Local Stock

After creating your warehouse layout, go to:

WooCommerce → Product Locations → Local Stock

At this stage, all products will have 0 stock assigned to your new locations. WooCommerce stock still contains the correct total, but the local values are empty.

Before you can manage stock efficiently, you need to:

1. Set a location on your products
   • Assign products to the correct warehouse or sub-location
   • This can be done in bulk for faster setup
2. Claim stock from WooCommerce
   • Use the “Claim” option to move stock from WooCommerce Total Stock into the selected location
   • This ensures your local stock reflects the actual inventory in each warehouse

Claiming stock does not change the total WooCommerce product stock. It simply moves quantity from “Unassigned” into a proper physical location so Product Locations can begin tracking it.

Step 3: Confirm Local Stock Is Correct

Once you have assigned locations and claimed stock:

• The Local Stock column shows the amount stored at your selected location
• The WC Total Stock column shows the overall product stock
• Unassigned Stock should now be zero or close to zero for most items

Products with variations are clearly marked so you can manage each variation separately if needed.

At this point, Product Locations is fully active and ready for daily use.

Step 4: Explore Your Core Tools

After initial setup, you can begin using the primary Product Locations features:

• Local Stock tab — Adjust stock values, add reasons, set notes, and work in bulk
• Location Summary tab — View stock distribution and charts
• History tab — Review all stock changes
• Sales / Orders tab — See how order fulfillment affects location stock
• Inventory Snapshots — Take a snapshot now or schedule automatic ones
• Settings — Adjust default location, cost detection, and snapshot frequency

You do not need to configure everything before you start. Product Locations is designed so you can begin simple and add more features as needed.