A warehouse consists of a group of storage locations and processing functions. These can constitute a single building; a part of a larger building; or, for storage of material such as construction materials, the storage locations can be in the open air. A single warehouse can actually consist of a number of separate buildings.

Because QAD core is not concerned with all the workings within the warehouse, each warehouse is defined as a standard location. This approach lets you keep all the internal warehouse operations separate from other system activities. When you want to send inventory to a warehouse, as far as QAD core is concerned, you are simply putting it in a location; however, when that location is identified as a warehouse, all the QAD Warehousing functions are available.

From a QAD core perspective, you receive inventory into a location associated with a site. However, because this is a warehouse, the inventory does not actually stay in that location. The location is used as a gateway into the actual storage locations within the warehouse.

Eventually, the inventory is put away in one or more storage locations within the warehouse. Each of these locations is defined in the same way as other locations, so the inventory is again recognized by the system as residing in a known location in a known site.