In Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central (Inventory and Warehouse Management), how do I… Remove a Warehouse/Location from Use

This post is part of the In Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central (Inventory and Warehouse Management), how do I… series and of the wider In Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central, how do I… series which I am posting as I familiarise myself with Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central.

So, this came up as a query from a prospect I was talking about implementing Business Central and I had what I thought was a brain freeze where I couldn’t think of the answer.

How do you remove a warehouse, or stop processing, if you close the warehouse down (which the customer would be doing with one of their warehouses in a few months post-implementation of Business Central)?

I assumed this was just a momentary memory lapse and said I’d check and get back to them. Unfortunately, the reason I didn’t think of the answer, is that in Business Central there isn’t one.

You have no way of closing a location, such as making inactive or disabling it. Once a location has been created, it is there and can be used.

The only workaround I could come up with is to delete the Inventory Posting Setup, which would stop transactions being posted to it.

This wasn’t the answer I hoped to find; I have worked with other ERP systems, including a Microsoft one, which did allow stock locations to be removed from use. The Microsoft one I worked with was Dynamics GP, which had this functionality added back in late-2012.

I’m not the only person to have come across this deficiency; there is an “idea” on the Ideas – Experience Dynamics 365 asking that the ability to “block” a location from use, similar to blocking movement to/from a bin, is added, but the idea requires votes for Microsoft to consider adding this functionality (it’s perhaps also worth noting that someone there has also suggested deleting the inventory posting setup as a workaround too).