NextStock — Advanced warehouse & barcodes

Locations · Scanning · Batches & serials · Pickings · Replenishment · Cycle counting

Dolibarr tells you how many items you have. It does not tell you where they are, which batch expires first, in which order to walk the warehouse, or what must be ordered today to be delivered on time. NextStock fills that gap: a real warehouse module, with addressing, barcode scanning, batch and serial traceability, pickings with an optimised route, replenishment rules and cycle counting.

What the module brings

1. Warehouse addressing

• Zone / rack / bin locations: the code A-01-02 is built automatically, never typed by hand.
• Every location carries its own barcode, ready to be printed and scanned.
• Adjustable route order, to make the theoretical path match the real geometry of your aisles.
• Locations can be flagged pickable or not: receiving and shipping areas stay out of the picking route.
• Several warehouses, each with its own addressing plan.

2. Barcode scanning

• A scanning screen designed for a handheld terminal: wide field, permanent focus, nothing to touch between two reads.
• EAN-13, EAN-8, UPC with check digit verification: a partial read or a swapped digit is refused instead of being taken for another item.
• GS1-128 logistic labels decoded: GTIN, batch number, serial number, production and expiry dates, quantity. The human readable form (01)…(17)… is accepted too.
• Location codes, picking references and product references are recognised.
• Journal of every scan, successful or not: that is what lets you spot an unreadable label or a badly configured item.
• Works with USB and Bluetooth scanners in keyboard mode, including the tab character some models send.

3. Batches, serials and expiry

• Quantity, location, production and expiry dates, blocking status.
• Expiry control with an adjustable threshold: valid, expiring soon, expired.
• FEFO rule (first expired, first out): allocating a quantity walks the batches in the right order and reports the missing quantity explicitly instead of making it disappear.
• Blocked, empty and expired batches are automatically kept out of picking.
• A serial number cannot hold more than one unit: the rule is enforced, not suggested.

4. Pickings

• Three types: receipt, delivery, internal transfer.
• Optimised route: lines are sorted by location with a natural sort, so A-02-01 really comes before A-10-01. Lines without a location are pushed to the end.
• Line by line entry of the picked quantities, with over-picking refused by default and an option to allow it.
• Live progress, finished lines highlighted.
• On closing, the stock movements are written and the Dolibarr product stock is updated.
• Priority, planned date, assignment to an operator, late pickings highlighted.

5. Replenishment

• Min / max rules per product and per warehouse.
• Packaging multiple: the proposed quantity is rounded up to the box, the pallet or the production batch.
• Supplier lead time: the module computes the date the order must leave.
• Projected quantity taking the incoming and the committed quantities into account.
• Proposals ranked by severity: out of stock, critical, low.

6. Cycle counting

• Three types: full, cycle, spot, over a warehouse or a single location.
• Automatic loading of the theoretical stock, then entry of the counts.
• Gaps valued at the unit cost, surplus and shortage separated, net result.
• Accuracy rate: the share of lines counted without a gap, the indicator that really matters.
• A line that was not counted stays different from a line counted at zero: no phantom gap.
• ABC classification by value (80 / 95%) and the recommended counting frequency: 12 times a year for A, 4 for B, 1 for C.
• On validation, the adjustment movements are written and the stock is corrected.

7. Journal and dashboard

• Complete movement journal: entries, exits, transfers, adjustments, with the source and target locations, the batch and the operator. The stock can be rebuilt from that journal alone.
• Dashboard: pickings to process, late pickings, replenishment alerts, counts in progress.
• Widget for the Dolibarr home page: the stock alerts.

Security and permissions

Eight separate permissions let you open exactly what each profile needs:

Validating a count, the only operation that corrects the stock, is protected by a permission distinct from the counting one: the picker counts, the supervisor validates.

Compatibility

• Dolibarr 16.0 to 21.x (validated on 21.0.2).
• PHP 7.4 to 8.3 (validated on PHP 8.2).
• Databases: MySQL 5.7+, MariaDB 10.3+, PostgreSQL 9.6+.
• Multi-company: every table carries the entity column.
• The native Products and Stocks modules are required.
• Hardware: USB and Bluetooth scanners in keyboard mode, Android terminals with a browser. The module drives no proprietary reader: it reads what arrives at the keyboard.
• No external JavaScript library.

Installation

1. Deploy the ZIP from Setup → Modules → Deploy external module, or copy the nextstock folder into htdocs/custom/.
2. Enable NextStock in Setup → Modules/Applications.
3. Create your locations in NextStock → Setup → Locations.
4. Grant the permissions to the relevant users.

Activation creates the nine tables of the module and installs five sample locations when a warehouse already exists. No native table is modified; only the stock column of the products is kept up to date, so that the Dolibarr screens stay consistent.

Quality

• 46 automated tests and 234 assertions covering the barcode and GS1 decoding, the replenishment computation, the route sorting, the FEFO rule, the inventory gaps, the ABC classification and the persistence of the objects.
• Code documented with PHPDoc, following the Dolibarr coding conventions.
• SQL queries systematically typed or escaped.
• Anti-CSRF tokens on every write action.
• Responsive interface, designed for a handheld terminal.

Languages

Interface fully translated into French, English, German, Italian and Spanish.

Package content

• Installable module as a ZIP archive.
• Training manual in French (PDF).
• Technical documentation, migration guide, compatibility matrix and test report.
• Real screenshots of every feature.

Demo of the NextStock module
Login : demo
Password : demo