Set up inter-store trade

Switch on inter-store trade and create the supplier and customer records that let your stores trade with each other.

Flow Retail works out that two stores are trading from the records involved, not from anything you tick per order. A store sells through a supplier that represents it, and buys as a customer that represents it. Getting those records right is the whole setup.

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Before you start

• The Inter-store trade extension switched on for your organization — ask us.

• Your central warehouse set up as a store in Flow Retail, holding its own stock.

• Permission to manage stores and suppliers in Flow Admin.

• All trading stores on the same local currency. Purchase orders in a foreign currency are refused.

Once any two of your stores have traded, the extension can no longer be removed — and that holds even after the orders are closed and long finished. Settle the shape of it before you start.

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What a chain actually needs

Work out the direction of trade first, because it decides how many records you create.

If this store should	It needs
Sell to other stores	A supplier that stands for it
Buy from other stores	A company customer that stands for it
Do both	One of each

A warehouse that only supplies the shops needs one supplier and nothing else. Ten shops that only draw on the warehouse need ten customers. If you also want the shops to lend stock to each other, every shop needs both.

A store can be represented by at most one supplier and one customer, so there is never any doubt which record stands for it. A store cannot trade with itself.

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Set the two options

Both sit on the extension, under Admin → Settings → Extensions, on the card named Inter Store Trade.

Option	What it does
Markup percent	A whole number from 0 to 100, added to the purchase price the goods are priced from. Leave it at 0 to move goods at that price
Allow cross-organization	Lets stores in different organizations trade. Off by default

Markup is the fallback, not the only lever. Give a shop's customer record a price list at the warehouse and its line wins outright, with no markup on top — that is how you set a fixed internal price per shop.

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Create the supplier and the customer

Create them first, then link each to its store.

• The supplier: create a supplier for the store that will sell, a warehouse typically, under Admin → Products → Suppliers.

• The customer: create a company customer for each store that will buy. A store is a business, not a person.

These customer records are reserved for inter-store trade. Any parked or confirmed sale to one, from a store that has a supplier standing for it, creates a purchase order and a goods receipt at the store it represents. Never use them for anything else.

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Link them to the store

1

Open the store

Go to Admin → Stores and open the store. Open the General tab and find the Inter-store section. It only shows while the extension is on.

2

Select the supplier or the customer

Click Select supplier to let the store sell, or Select customer to let it buy. Search, pick one and it is saved straight away.

3

Repeat for each store

Do the same on every store that trades. To change a link later, remove it with the × next to its name and select another.

A store can have one supplier and one customer, never more. Shops can now raise purchase orders against the supplier, and see that store's incoming goods when they look in other locations.

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To settle sales between the stores

Settling is optional (see what it does to your figures). To settle in Flow Assistant, the sending store needs a way to take payment that is not money over the counter: an invoice, or a payment method of the External kind, under Admin → Settings → Payment Methods. Without one, Assistant says No payment method for internal trade is set up. Ask an administrator.

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What's next?

• Buy from another store

• Sell to another store

• Inter-store trade in Assistant

Last updated 13.10.2026