Locations represent the physical places where your items are stored. Beam provides a hierarchical location structure with visual tools to organize, view, and manage your warehouse layout.
Location hierarchy
Locations in Beam are organized in a three-level hierarchy that mirrors how real warehouses are structured:
Maps
The top level. A map represents a large area such as a warehouse, a building, or a site. Your organization may have one or more maps depending on the number of physical locations you manage.
Grids
Within a map, grids represent structured storage areas. A grid is a 2D or 3D arrangement of storage positions think of it as a set of shelving units, racks, or aisles organized in rows and columns.
Cells / Spots
Individual storage positions within a grid, identified by coordinates (X, Y, and optionally Z for multi-level storage). A cell represents a single shelf, bin, or bay where items are physically stored.
Grid view
The grid view displays your storage locations as a visual grid. This is the primary way to interact with your warehouse layout in Beam.
Visual layout
Each cell in the grid represents a storage position. Cells can show the number of items stored, the occupancy level, or other information depending on your configuration.
Color coding
The grid uses color coding to indicate how full each location is relative to its configured capacity. This makes it easy to spot available space or overcrowded areas at a glance. The colors range from empty (no items) through partially filled to full (at or over capacity).
Occupancy indicators
Each cell displays visual indicators showing its current occupancy level. You can quickly see which locations have space and which are full without needing to click into each one.
Map view
The map view provides a visual, spatial representation of your locations. Locations are shown at their configured positions, giving you an overview of the physical layout of your storage facility. You can navigate by clicking on areas to zoom into specific zones.
Navigating locations
Beam provides several ways to navigate through your location hierarchy:
- Breadcrumbs At the top of the location page, breadcrumb navigation shows where you are in the hierarchy. Click any level in the breadcrumb trail to jump back to that level.
- Click to drill down Click on a map to see its grids. Click on a grid cell to see its contents.
- Back button Use the back button in the header to go up one level in the hierarchy.
- Search Use the search functionality to find a specific location by name.
Viewing cell contents
When you click on a location cell, you can see detailed information about what is stored there:
- A list of all items stored at that location.
- The quantity of each item.
- Container and batch details (if applicable).
- Options to move items to a different location.
From the cell contents view, you can click on any item to navigate to its detail page, or use the move functionality to relocate items to another position.
Location capacity
Each location can have a configured maximum capacity. This capacity setting helps you manage space efficiently:
- Capacity is set when creating or editing a location (configured by your administrator).
- The grid view shows visual indicators of how full each location is relative to its capacity.
- Locations at or near capacity are highlighted with distinct colors so you can easily spot them.
- When moving items, the system shows the destination location's remaining capacity to help you avoid overfilling.