Do you have a suggestion to implement the following need: Exclude multiple locations from the calculation of availability of deliverables to the customer. For example I have the following locations that should be excluded from searches: Loan, Lab, Marketing, Show Room, Support, etc.
I saw the thread How to Manage out of stock location but would there be another way to do that than to define a warehouse by location type ?
You should create a separate location for all the excluded stock (or a location for each type if you prefer) that is outside not under the warehouse location.
If the products are consumed on such locations and do not come back to the warehouse you can set it’s type to Lost and Found. Otherwise you can use a Storage type to indicate that this material is available to be requested if needed.
Then you can use Internal Shipments to move products between the warehouse and this new locations.
For me it is simpler to put the locations in the warehouse but not under the storage location.
I guess the idea is not to pick them. But of course it will be taken in computation for supply. It depends on the need.
For some of them, the articles do not leave their location for example: show room (except to join the stock of salable products, an internal movement resolves the question) for others, for example: Loan, the material leaves the 'location but will come back after a while.
The need is simply (hopefully) to be able to exclude these locations from the various calculations. But these should stay under the main warehouse because thes belongs to the company and must be present in the valuation of stocks (including for loaned equipments)
For me the stock outside a warehouse location but with storage type should be also considered as company stock and so included on the valuation of stocks. This is what is implemented on the stock valuation modules.
So you can safetly create a location outside the warehouse to exclude them for the computation but include them also on the valuation.
But show room is a special location where the products are not stored, so you should do an internal move to indicate that they are there. So for me using a storage location outside of the warehouse makes it easier to use.