In the Warehouse Management (WM) application, there are two types of stock movements:

• Movements that affect only the warehouse, for example, stock transfers within a warehouse

• Movements that affect not only the warehouse but also other departments, such as stock transfers to customers or to production

Stock movements in WM are generally initiated by another system, such as Inventory Management or Sales and Distribution (SD).

Every movement of goods in WM is carried out with a transfer order and involves the movement of materials from one storage type to another. When stock is moved, a source storage type and storage bin as well as a destination storage type and storage bin are used. For example, an ongoing record of stock is kept as it is moved from the goods receipt area to high rack storage and into row 21, stack 4, level 2, which is a physical storage bin with the coordinates 21-04-02. For stock movements in WM, the actual or total amount of stock in the system does not change.

WM movements involving the Inventory Management (IM) component use storage types that are called interim storage areas. An interim storage area is a logical (and, in some cases, physical) storage area that is used to exchange quantity data between IM and WM.

Interim storage areas for goods receipts, goods issues, and differences are used to temporarily store data before it is posted to the storage areas in the warehouse.