What is in your warehouse, where it sits and who took it
One stock ledger for the whole company: a central warehouse and a store on every site, with issue slips and transfers.
Matterial’s warehouse module is your company’s stock ledger, not a notebook per store. It lives one level above the site: a central warehouse plus a store on each project, and transfers between them instead of new purchase orders. Every receipt, issue slip, transfer and adjustment is recorded with its date, quantity, cost and the person responsible, so each item’s balance — and its value at weighted-average cost — is current at all times, and you know which store holds a material without calling anyone.
| Order | Supplier | Material | Amount | Delivery | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| OC-2026-0148 | THThe Home Depot | Concrete f'c=250 | $184,000 | Lun 30 | In transit |
| OC-2026-0147 | CConstrualcalde | Rebar #4 | $96,000 | Lun 30 | Approved |
| OC-2026-0146 | CConstrurama | Red brick | $71,400 | Mar 1 | Delivered |
| OC-2026-0145 | CConstrualcalde | Gray cement | $28,000 | Dom 29 | Delivered |
| OC-2026-0144 | SSodimac | Electrical | $42,500 | Vie 27 | Delivered |
What problem it solves
Material you already bought gets bought again because nobody knows it is sitting in the other site’s store. The storekeeper keeps the count in a notebook only he can read, issues get written down "in a minute" and cement leaves without anyone recording which work front took it or who signed for it. Count day turns up a shortage nobody can explain any more, and the capital parked in stores — material bought for a phase that already passed — shows up in no report until someone trips over it.
How it works
Load what you already have
Record a receipt or import your inventory from a spreadsheet; what you receive against a purchase order goes straight into the store you choose.
Move it with a document
Receipt, issue slip, transfer between stores or adjustment. The slip asks who is receiving it and which work front it goes to, with a signature or photo.
Check before you buy
The moment you type a material into a requisition, Matterial tells you whether you already have it and in which store, so you can transfer instead of buying it again.
Count and reconcile
The cycle count compares physical stock against the system, posts the difference as an adjustment and flags shortages as possible shrinkage.
What's included
- Company-wide stock ledger: central warehouse + one store per site
- Issue slip with the receiver, the work front and a signature or photo
- Transfers between stores: move the material instead of buying it twice
- Anti-double-buy alert inside the requisition: "you already have X in stock"
- "Where is it?" search: the company total plus the breakdown store by store
- Item ledger (kardex): every movement with its running balance
- Minimum stock per item, with a below-minimum flag and a restock alert
- Cycle count: system vs counted, with shortages flagged as possible shrinkage
- Inventory value at weighted-average cost, per store and per item
- Material consumption by site, in quantity and in money
- Plan needs: what the project requires minus what is bought and what is already in stock
- A next-15-days window taken from the schedule, so you only order what is urgent
- Warehouse alerts: running out, suggested transfer, overconsumption and idle capital
- Receipts from the purchase order, offline capture, and export to Excel, CSV or PDF
How construction warehouse and inventory control works, inside
The warehouse belongs to the company, not to each site
Most builders don’t have a warehouse: they have several, and none of them talk to each other. There is the company’s central warehouse — where the big purchases land and where the leftovers of the last project sit — and there is each site’s store, with its own padlock and its own notebook. Each keeps its count by hand, so the company’s inventory doesn’t exist as a number: it exists as the sum of whatever each storekeeper remembers.
In Matterial the warehouse is a single ledger with several stores inside it. The central warehouse and each site’s store are warehouses of the same system, with the same item catalog and the same movement types; you switch store with a selector and see its stock, its value and its movements. And because they all live in the same ledger, moving material from one to another is a transfer — it leaves one, it enters the other, with a record on both sides — not a new purchase or a phone call nobody wrote down.
That is the practical difference: in the notebook, the material left over from a finished project stays there until somebody discovers it; in the ledger, that balance is still yours, it is visible from the central warehouse and it can be transferred to the site that needs it today. Inventory stops being a fact about one store and becomes a fact about the company.
- Central warehouse + one store per site, in the same ledger
- Transfers between stores, recorded on both sides
- The same item catalog across every store
- Inventory value seen per store and as a company total
The issue slip: material leaves with a name, a front and a signature
The biggest hole in a warehouse isn’t spectacular theft: it’s the issue nobody wrote down. A foreman picks up twenty bags of cement, walks off with them, and the entry is left for an end of day that never comes. When the warehouse doesn’t reconcile there is nobody to ask, because there is no document: no receiver, no date, no work front.
In Matterial an issue is a slip, not a mental note. Beyond the item, the quantity and the date, the slip asks who is receiving it and which work front it goes to — level, gridline, area — and accepts a signature or a photo as proof. If it leaves the central warehouse you can attribute it to the destination site. The slip is saved in the very movement that deducts the stock, so balance and document never drift apart; the item’s ledger shows them on the same line.
The slip is also raised where it happens: from a phone on site, with or without signal. If there is no network the movement is stored on the device and syncs on reconnect, so the storekeeper doesn’t have to remember it back at the office. And since every issue carries its site and front, the consumption-by-site view builds itself: how much material each project took, in quantity and in money, without entering anything twice.
- The slip records who received it, when, and for which front
- Signature or photo as proof, stored next to the movement
- Raised from a phone on site, even with no signal
- Consumption by site is derived from the slips, never re-entered
Don’t buy it twice: the alert before the requisition
Double buying is the silliest loss and the most common one: site 2 orders twenty bags of mortar that have been sitting in site 1’s store for four months. Nobody lied; the person raising the requisition simply had no way to see the company’s inventory at the exact moment they were typing it, which is the only moment the number is worth anything.
That is why the alert lives inside the requisition, not in a separate report. As soon as you type the material, Matterial looks that item up across every store in the company and, if there is stock, says so right there: you already have this many units in the warehouse, check before over-buying. With that, the natural next step stops being "buy" and becomes "transfer", which costs no new money.
The same question is answered the other way round from the warehouse search. Type the name of a material and you see the company total plus the breakdown by store: how much is in the central warehouse, how much on each site. That is the answer to "where is it?" without phone calls, and it is also the starting point of the transfer that replaces the purchase.
And for what really is missing, the plan-needs tab does the full subtraction: it explodes the materials the project’s budget requires from its unit-price build-ups, subtracts what has already been bought and what is on the shelf, and leaves the column of what actually needs buying. You can read it for the whole plan or only for the next 15 days, taken from the dated tasks in the schedule, so you order what is urgent instead of tying up cash in material you will use in three months.
- The "you already have it" alert appears inside the requisition
- "Where is it?" search with company total and per-store breakdown
- Plan needs = required − bought − stock on hand
- A 15-day window from the schedule, so cash isn’t committed early
Cycle counts, minimum stock and idle capital: the leak comes to light
A warehouse counted once a year isn’t controlled, it’s audited. By the time the shortage shows up, twelve months have passed, two storekeepers have come and gone, and there is no way to tell whether it was waste, a data-entry error or theft. Cycle counting exists for exactly that: count often, count little, while the trail is still warm.
In Matterial you count physically and enter what you find; the table shows what the system holds, what you counted and the difference. When you post the count, that difference is recorded as an adjustment with its reason — waste, theft, entry error — and shortages are explicitly flagged as possible shrinkage. Nothing is corrected quietly: the adjustment stays in the item ledger as one more movement, with its date and note, so the history of the balance can always be rebuilt line by line.
On the other side are the two alerts that prevent the loss before it happens. Minimum stock per item turns the balance red and warns you when it drops below the number you set, so you restock before a crew stalls — stopping a crew over one bag costs far more than the bag. And the idle-capital alert points at material with real value that hasn’t moved in months, money asleep in a store that no financial report shows, so you can decide whether to use it, transfer it or sell it.
The alerts don’t sit waiting for someone to go looking: the warehouse opens with the two or three things that matter today — running out, suggested transfer, overconsumption against the site’s progress, idle capital — each with the button that resolves it. And every table in the module, from stock to item ledger, exports to Excel, CSV or PDF when you need it outside.
- Cycle count: system vs counted, difference posted as an adjustment
- Shortages flagged as possible shrinkage, with reason and date
- Minimum stock per item that warns before a crew stalls
- Idle-capital alert: material with value and no movement
The storekeeper’s notebook vs. Matterial
The same warehouse, controlled two different ways.
| Today (a notebook and a sheet per store) | With Matterial | |
|---|---|---|
| Knowing what is in each store | You have to call the storekeeper | A search with the total and the per-store breakdown |
| Material already sitting on another site | It gets bought again | The alert catches it and suggests the transfer |
| Issuing material | Written down "in a minute", if at all | A slip with receiver, work front and signature |
| Which site the material went to | Reconstructed at close | Consumption by site, in quantity and in money |
| The history of one item | You leaf through the notebook | Item ledger with every movement and its balance |
| Shortages | They show up at the annual count | Cycle counts that flag them as possible shrinkage |
| Restocking | Once it ran out and the crew stalled | Minimum stock that warns beforehand |
| Material parked in a store | Nobody sees it | Idle-capital alert, with its value |
Illustrative example: a builder with three active sites
A hypothetical company with a central warehouse and three site stores. The figures only show what the module displays; they don’t represent a real case or a guaranteed result.
Illustrative example with hypothetical figures. Not a market figure or a guaranteed result; it only explains how the stock ledger, the alerts and the cycle count put numbers on what today lives in a notebook.
One scenario per role
Receives the delivery against the purchase order, issues material with a slip — name, front, signature — and counts a handful of items every week. When the site manager asks whether there is any rebar left, he answers from the search instead of from memory, and if a shortage appears, it appears this week and not in December.
Before raising a requisition he sees that the material is already in the central warehouse or in the neighbouring site’s store, and asks for a transfer. In the plan tab he reads the 15-day window from the schedule to order only what is urgent, and he knows which front took every issue.
Sees the inventory value across the whole company, how much capital is sitting idle in stores, and which sites consume more material than their progress justifies. Buys the same thing twice far less often, and decides on the warehouse number instead of the sum of three notebooks.
Who it's for
Works with the rest of Matterial
Coming from another tool?
Frequently asked questions
Is the warehouse per project or company-wide?
Company-wide. There is a central warehouse and one store per project, all in the same stock ledger and sharing the same item catalog. You can look at each store on its own and also at the company total per item.
How does it stop me from buying the same material twice?
When you type a material into a requisition, Matterial searches every store and, if there is stock, tells you right there how much you have and reminds you to check before over-buying. From there the natural move is to transfer from the store that holds it, not to raise a new purchase.
What does an issue slip capture?
The item, the quantity, the date, who is receiving it and which work front it goes to, plus an optional signature or photo as proof. If it leaves the central warehouse you can attribute it to a destination site, and that is what builds the consumption-by-site view.
Can an issue be recorded with no signal on site?
Yes. The slip is stored on the device and syncs when the connection comes back, with no re-entry. That is the normal case on site: a store with no coverage and a storekeeper who is not going to retype it at the office.
What is the item ledger (kardex)?
It is the full history of that item in that store: every receipt, issue, transfer and adjustment with its date and the running balance after each movement. It is what lets you rebuild how you got to today’s balance and where it went wrong.
How does the cycle count work?
You count physically, enter the counted quantity, and the system shows what it holds, what you counted and the difference. When you post it, the difference becomes an adjustment with its reason and shortages are flagged as possible shrinkage instead of being corrected quietly.
How do I know when to restock?
Through minimum stock per item: you set the level at which you want to be warned, and the balance is flagged as below minimum with an alert on the warehouse home. The point is to restock before a crew stalls, not once it already has.
What is the idle-capital alert?
It flags material with real value that has had no movement in the store for months. It is company money asleep in a corner that no financial report shows, and the alert tells you how much it is worth and for how many days, so you can use it, transfer it or sell it.
Where do the "plan needs" come from?
From the unit-price build-ups in that project’s budget: Matterial explodes the materials the plan requires, subtracts what has already been bought and what is on the shelf, and leaves what still needs buying. If the project has no build-ups loaded it cannot explode its materials, and it says so.
Can I load my current inventory from a spreadsheet?
Yes. The importer recognises code, description, unit, quantity and cost from your sheet, shows you a preview before saving, creates the items that are missing and records the quantity as a receipt in the store you choose.
Does it connect to purchasing and to project cost?
Yes. What you receive against a purchase order enters the warehouse as a receipt, and every issue attributed to a project feeds that project’s material consumption, which is compared against the budget in cost control.
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