From the Special menu, choose Show stores

In mSupply a virtual store is a way of segregating particular stock so that some users only see that stock and the transactions associated with it. When a user logs into mSupply, they choose a particular store to login to - this we call the current store. mSupply then operates as if:

1. The stock in that store is the only stock available.
2. Only stock from the current store will be available for issuing,
3. Reports will relate to stock in that store
4. Issues from and receipts to that store only use the stock in that store
5. Only suppliers and customers sets as “visible” for that store will be able to be chosen for receiving and issuing goods
6. Only items set as “visible” in that store will be usable (So for example if you have a store that handles only vaccines you can make vaccines visible in that store (and invisible in all stores that don't handle vaccines)

Many users of mSupply will only have a single store, and so will have no need of this functionality.

The following examples illustrate situations where you might want to run more than one store.

• A hospital pharmacy where you have two dispensing locations: an inpatient pharmacy and an outpatient pharmacy.
• A pharmaceutical warehouse where stock from a particular donor is received, issued and accounted for separately to stock in the rest of the warehouse.
• A hospital pharmacy where the pharmacy store stock is treated separately to the dispensary stock. You would set up mSupply with a store called “Pharmacy store” and a store called “Dispensary”. You would use the function covered in section 8.05. Transferring goods to another store to move stock from the pharmacy store to the dispensary.
• A pharmaceutical warehouse where you have 2 or more actual warehouses. These may be adjacent or several hundred kilometres apart. (Of course you need network connectivity between sites to run mSupply at each site).
• You're using mSupply mobile- each mobile site will synchronise data with a virtual store on the mSupply server.

Note: In the above examples, when you log on, you would select the appropriate mode - see table:

From the Special drop down menu click Show stores… The Stores list window (shown below) appears and displays a list of all the stores which currently exist including their sync type:

Double-click on any store in the list in the View stores window described above to view or edit its details. You will see the same window as in the Creating new stores section below but the various fields will be filled in with the store's current settings. You can click into the fields and edit them as desired. Note that in the top left of the window, the name of the store you are editing is always displayed, regardless of which tab you are on, so that you always have a reminder of which store you are editing!

To create a new store click the New store button in the Store list window shown above. This will display the Store details window shown below, which allows you to enter the details of the new store:

The name used to identify the store throughout mSupply. It must be unique and mSupply will tell you if another store has the same name; you will need to change it before you can save. Any non-printable characters entered before or after the name will be removed. Any entered in the name will be replaced with an underscore (_).

The code used to identify the store. If you have a lot of stores it would be helpful if you decide on a good pattern to use for the codes. The code must be unique too; mSupply will tell you if the code is already in use and you will need to change it before you can save it. Any non-printable characters entered before or after the code will be removed. Any entered in the code (and spaces) will be replaced with an underscore (_).

Set in the drop down list to the right of the Store code field. Can be one of:

• Store: a normal store used for managing inventory and issuing to customers
• Dispensary: a store used for managing inventory and dispensing to patients

The name of the organisation running the store. Defaults to the organisation name entered in File > Preferences.

Enter the address and contact details for the store in here if there are any. These details can be used in reports

Check the Disable this store checkbox to stop the store from being used. You might want to use this feature if the store is not ready for use yet or is no longer to be used and can't be deleted. You will be asked to confirm the disabling after clicking on the OK button on this window.

Select the officer responsible for the store in this drop down list. A helpful reminder for others and can be used in reports.

These are used when the store needs to be identified securely over electronic communications. An example of this is when using the cold chain app for monitoring temperature in cold storage and freezers.

To tell mSupply to use the credentials, check the Use store credentials checkbox (unchecking it deletes the store's credentials so please be careful before doing so).

This will enable the Username and Password text fields and you can enter the appropriate details.

• The Username will be set to the first three letters of the store's code by default.
• The Password must be at least 4 symbols but not more than 30 symbols, and can contain letters and numbers.

If you need to view the password you have entered to check it is correct, click on the button.

Tags are used in several ways:

• for determining which programs a store can use.
• for contronlling some customisation features.
• for reporting to group stores together.

This area shows the tags that the store currently has. To add a tag, simply click into the area and type the tag's name. When you have finished typing the tag's name then press the Tab or Space keys on the keyboard (not Enter or return, that will close the window!). You know when you have done it right because the tag will appear in its own little box with an 'x'. If you want to remove any tag from the store, simply click on that 'x'. In this way you can add or delete as many tags from a store as you like.

When you click on the OK, OK & Next or OK & Previous buttons, any new tags you have created here will be added to the list of name tags in your system. See the 5.05. Name tags page for details.

After having created a new store, the Stores list window will display the new list of all stores and you may double-click an entry to edit that store's details. A number of things that will need to be attended to are:

• Set the preferences for the store.
• Set the store's logo so that it can appear in print-outs and reports.
• Set the visibility of items in the store. All items in the system will be set to invisible in the new store when it is created. You will need to modify visibility of items in order to be able to handle stock of those items.
• Setup Synchronisation if you are going to use a synced system. See remote_sync.
• Setup any custom store data (used for reporting).
• Set the master lists used by the store (a convenient method for controlling item visibility). See 4.04. Item master lists

This tab contains the preferences that can be set for a store. Each store has its own settings for these preferences: this is different for the settings in File > Preferences which apply to all stores in an mSupply datafile.

This is what the tab looks like:

The Search store preferences search bar at the top is used to find a particular preference. If you type something in here, preferences which contain the text you have typed only are displayed, all others are hidden. There are a lot of preferences so this should help if you just can't find the one you want!

This is what each preference does:

These are used by the notification/alert functionality described on the 14.01. Notifications (Alerts) page. The notifications inform users of situations that need their attention. The thresholds that give rise to some of the notifications can be set here.

The minimum months of stock an item must have to be considered as overstocked. i.e. in danger of expiring on the shelf before it is used. An alert is triggered for an item if the total quantity in stock (including all batches) divided by the average monthly consumption of the item (calculated using the last 12 months' usage in the current store) is greater than or equal to this threshold number. The default is 6 months.

Also called Buffer stock, this is the number of months of stock that an item must have less of, to be considered understocked i.e. in danger of not having enough to meet demand. An alert is triggered for an item is the total quantity in stock(including all batches) divided by the average monthly consumption of the item (calculated using the last 12 months' usage in the current store) is less than or equal to this threshold number. The default is 3 months.

An alert will be triggered for an item if a batch is due to expire in less than this number of months. The default is 3 months.

This section is for store specific custom data fields that must always be present. User definable custom fields are handled on the Custom fields tab (see the Custom fields tab section below for details).

Monthly consumption lookback period: The number of months of consumption information to use when calculating average monthly consumption for this store. Currently only used when the Côte d'Ivoire customisation is enabled.

Months lead time: The number of months before ordered goods normally arrive. Used to calculate how much stock to order for the suggested quantity in requisitions, for example. Currently only used when the Côte d'Ivoire customisation is enabled.

These preferences affect the suggested pack functionality described on the 8.06. Box management page.

• Prefix for generated boxes: Defaults ot no prefix. Each box created in a suggested pack has a number which starts at 1 and increments by 1 for each new box created. Whatever you enter in this text field will be added before these numbers to give you the box names. For example, if you enter “Box-” then the boxes will be created with names “Box-1”, “Box-2”, “Box-3” etc.
• Percentage space to leave empty: Defaults to 0. Boxes will be packed as close to 100% of their volume minus the value entered in here. This is helpful to account for situations where the size, shape and possible orientation of packs make it hard to pack them all into the actual volume expected.

There are three options:

• Don't receive goods into stock until supplier invoice is taken off hold - for goods to enter stock you must finalise the goods receipt and then take the automatically generated supplier invoice off hold
• Receive goods into stock, and leave supplier invoice confirmed - goods enter stock as soon as the goods receipt is finalised. The automatically generated supplier invoice is created with confirmed status.
• Receive goods into stock, and finalise supplier invoice immediately - goods enter stock as soon as the goods receipt is finalised. The automatically generated supplier invoice is created with finalised status.

How you set this preference is determined by how separate your goods receiving and finance sections are. If they are not in the same building, you might want to use the “Receive into stock and leave confirmed” option, as this will allow you to proceed with issuing goods without waiting for the finance department's approval.

This option is used to determine whether stock transferred from one store to another is received to a destination store and automatically introduced to stock or not. The On hold option prevents stock from being introduced, while the Finalised option automatically makes the stock available for use in the destination store - without the receiving store having the opportunity to amend the Goods Receipt.

• Choose Finalised if there is no need to check / alter the quantity received compared to what was sent.
• Choose On hold if the store is being used by mSupply mobile, and the goods receipt needs to be confirmed before receiving.

This is used with phased stocktakes (see the 4.18. Phased stocktakes page for details) to tell msupply which parts of your shelf location codes (see the 4.06. Stock locations and location types page for details) represent the aisle, level and position of the location.

An aisle is a whole row of racking like this:

A level is a horizontal level of the racking like this:

And a position is a vertical column of the racking like this:

Use the letters A, L and P to represent the aisle, level and position parts of the location code.

Let's use an example to show how it works. Let's say that the shelf location codes are in the format B01.C.01 where B01 represents the aisle, C represents the position and 01 represents the level. Then in the Location code pattern text box you would enter the text AAA.P.LL

It doesn't matter what characters you use as separators, mSupply only looks for the positions of the letters A, P and L. If more than one character is used to define any of the three parts of the location then they must appear together in the location code pattern.

Here you can set the store logo by pasting in a logo you have copied to the clipboard - you must copy the contents of a file to the clipboard, not the file itself. The file can be in .jpg, .png, .bmp, .gif, or .tiff format. This logo will be displayed at the bottom right of the mSupply navigator screen when you login to this store only.

This store logo will override the logo saved in the Settings > Preferences > Logo tab.

To print this store logo on standard customer and supplier invoices etc. you will need to go to the Settings > Preferences > Logo tab in mSupply and tick the Display logo on invoice checkbox. When a store logo is set it will print the store logo instead of the logo set on that preferences tab.

Note that after saving the store logo you must login to mSupply again or use the switch function to reload this store to see it.

This tab shows the custom fields that have been set up for stores (see the Custom fields section for details). You can also add or edit custom fields directly from this screen.

To add a new field, click on the New line button; a new line with default values of “Field label” and “Field value” in the two columns is added to the table and highlighted. Click on the value in each column and type the real label and value for the piece of information.

To edit the label or value of any custom field, simply click on the cell in the table and edit the entry.

To delete any custom field simply select its row in the table and click on the Delete line(s) button. You can use Shift+click, Control+click, Control A (or Cmd instead of Ctrl if you're using a Mac!) to select multiple lines and delete them all at once if you like.

Controlling the visibility of items in different stores is important because you can only order, distribute, receive goods for and report on items that are visible in your store. It's also important that stores don't have items visible that they don't use so that they don't accidentally order them etc.

If you have lots of stores in your data file, managing item visibility can turn into a difficult task. Thankfully, mSupply has some helpful tools to make it simple! There are 2 ways to manage item visibility and you use one or the other, not both:

1. automatically using the Master lists tab or
2. manually using the Visibility tab

Each are useful in different situations and are described below.

If you have a lot of stores in mSupply, we recommend that you use master lists to control item visibility. Especially in a syncing system because it means that the visibility of newly created items will be automatically handled correctly. The visibility of items in a store whose visibility is controlled by master lists is immediately updated if any changes are made to any of the master lists. For instance, if a new item is added to a master list controlling visibility then that new item is made visible in all stores that use the master list. And any items deleted from the master list are made invisible in any store using that list.

The first thing to do is to turn on the preference to make master lists control item visibility in stores. Do that in File > Preferences… on the Item tab - see General preferences, the item tab for details.

The next thing to do is to create the master list(s) that will control item visibility. See Item master lists for details on how to do that. Giving your master lists helpful names will help you remember what they're for e.g. “Store xxx visibility list”.

Now edit the store to tell mSupply which master list(s) will be used to define which items are visible in the store:

1. Click on Special > Show stores… (or click on the Stores icon on the Special tab of the navigator)
2. Double-click the store who's visibility you would like to manage:
3. Click on the Master lists tab:
4. Select which master list(s) you would like to control the visibility of items in your chosen store by checking their checkbox in the Use master list column: In this example, the All items: General warehouse master list has been selected to control the visibility of the General warehouse store. Please note: If there are a lot of master lists, you can type in the Search master lists field and the list will show only those master lists which contain what you type.
5. Click the OK button to finish. As soon as you do that the items on the selected master list(s) are made visible in the store and any items not on the selected master list(s) are made invisible. Any new items added to the selected master list(s) will be made visible in the store and any items removed form the master list(s) will be made invisible in the store.

The Visibility tab contains tools for manually setting the visibility of items and names in a store.

The item visibility tools are good to use if you do not have many stores in mSupply and only need to make occasional changes to visibility for a number of items. If you want to make a change to a single item's visibility in a single store then you can do that by going to the item's details window and using the store tab (see Item basics, the stores tab).

Here's what the tab looks like:

The buttons provide you with different ways to hide and show items and names in the store (Note: be careful showing names in databases that have a lot of names records. For example if you have 20 virtual stores and 200,000 names in your database, showing all names in all stores will create 4 million (20×200,000) records to map the visibility of each name in each store):

• The Show stats button shows how many items and names are currently hidden and visible
• The Set item visibility to match master lists for this store button matches the item visibility to the master lists that are selected on the Master lists tab. (Note: this is a one-off operation, no changes will be made to item visibility if the master lists are changed after you click this button. See the section above if you want that to happen!) If there are some items that can't be set to invisible (because they have stock, for example) a temporary master list will be created containing the items which could not have their visibility removed. Use the list to decide what to do with each item.
• The Make all items in this store visible and Make all items in this store invisible both do just as they say.
• The Set pack to one for all visible items in this store will check the Allow pack to 1 conversion and Convert pack to 1 when receiving checkboxes for all items in the store so that all stock received into the store will automatically be received in packs of 1. This is useful in a dispensary store, for example.
• The Set to match button requires you to choose a master list. Clicking the button makes the items that are on the master list selected in the drop down list next to it visible in the current store. Note that it does not hide items that are already visible but not on the master list.
• The Make all names in this store visible button does exactly what it says and makes all names in the datafile visible in the current store.
• The Make all names in this store invisible button does the opposite and makes all names in the datafile invisible in this store. Be careful using this - you won't be able to receive or distribute stock from/to anyone until you make some names visible in the store!
• The Query names button enables you to search for names (customers, suppliers, manufacturers, donors etc.) in the datafile. Every search you run creates a selection which is then operated on by the Make found names visible in this store button.
• The Make found names visible in this store will make all names in the last selection made with the Query names button visible in this store. Ask Sustainable Solutions for help if you're not sure about getting the right selection of names, as the consequences of making a mistake can be time consuming to fix!

The users tab shows which users have permission to log into this store.

The table shows a list of all the users in alphabetical order. If a user can login to this store then their corresponding Can login checkbox will be checked. If the store is the user's default store then the checkbox in the Default store column will be checked.

You can add or remove permission for a user to login to this store by checking or unchecking their Can login checkbox (only if you have permission to edit store details though).

mSupply has a synchronisation system designed to cope with environments which have weak or intermittent internet. The system passes information between a server and remote site (or tablet running mSupply mobile) when there is an internet connection, and stores information to be sent when there is not.

See the 29.01. Introduction to synchronisation page for more details.

This tab displays some of the synchronisation settings for this store:

The Resync patient records when store is saved checkbox forces all patient records to be re-synchrionised with the server when the OK button is clicked. This is useful if there appears to be something wrong with one or more patient records.

This tab shows a list of all the names (customers, suppliers, stores, donors, manufacturers etc.) in the datafile and which are visible in this store. You are also able to edit the visibility of names:

The table shows whether the name is a customer or supplier (or both). The checkboxes in the Visible in this store column are editable. If checked then the name is visible in this store, if unchecked then the name is not visible in this store. Click on one of the checkboxes to change its state.

• Store checkbox: If checked then names thast are stores are shown in the table
• Facility checkbox: If checked then names that are not stores are shown in the table
• Search names field: If you type in here then only names that contain what you type will be displayed in the list. Useful if you want to find a particular name or group of names in a long list.
• All off button: Clicking this will uncheck all the checkboxes in the Visible in this store column (so making all names invisible in this store) and the button will change to All on. Clicking it then will check all the checkboxes in the column (and therefore make all names visible in this store).
• Copy button: Copies the current state of all the checkboxes in the Visible in this store column.
• Paste button: Pastes the states of checkboxes saved using the Copy button to the names in the table. Doesn't do anything if you haven't previously clicked the Copy button.

Clicking on the OK, OK & Next or OK & Previous buttons will save any changes you make on this tab.

To delete a store, click on the Delete button in the View stores window. Note: deletion of a store is a serious thing to do and is only possible when that store contains zero stock and there have been no transactions recorded. mSupply will check and tell you that deletion is not possible if these criteria are not met. If you can't meet these criteria and you still want to stop people using the store then you can Disable it - see above.

You may have a customer that is about to start using mSupply. That customer needs to become a store in mSupply. There are two ways to do this.

• The 'old' method: Create new store and then merge with the existing customer name
• The recommended method: Turn an existing customer into a store

Until version v5.02 (see below), the procedure was:

1. Create the new store with a similar name
2. Use mSupply's Merge names functionality to merge the two names into one

Due to the limitations of the method described above, from mSupply v5.02 onwards, you can choose to convert an existing customer into a store, and thereby retain all of its properties.

1. Log into a store that will have the same or similar user and group permissions as the new store.
2. Customer > Show customers… to find the customer that you want to convert into a store and copy the Name. This will ensure that you are converting the correct name into a store - see warning below!
3. Special > Show stores… > New Store You will see an alert like that shown below. If you are logged in to a suitable store (see Alert above), then you can continue:
   
4. Click on the Turn an existing customer into a store checkbox
5. Enter the existing customer name into the Name field. You can search for existing customers by typing the first few letters of the customer's name, and then press Tab. To ensure that you are converting the correct name into a store, paste the Name that you copied in step 2 above. This should result in at least the store code field getting populated. If this does not happen, then the existing customer has not been recognised - try again.
6. Populate the Responsible officer, Store credentials and Tags fields if required.
7. Click OK