How to Create and Manage Locations

How to create and manage locations

Locations are the physical places assets live inside a Site — a building, a floor, a room.

Site = operational / physical boundary
Location = physical place inside the Site

Create operational Sites first at Dashboard → Sites (every organization starts with Main Office). Then add locations under a site. See What are Sites? and How to manage Sites.

Requirements

• Available on: All plans
• Roles: Owner, Admin, and Manager can create and edit (same permissions as assets). Archive needs Owner or Admin.

Steps

1. Go to Dashboard → Locations.
2. Click Add Location.
3. Enter a name. Sibling names must be unique under the same parent.
4. Choose a Site (required for a root location). Child locations inherit the parent's site — you do not pick the Site again for children.
5. Optionally choose a parent location.
6. Optionally add latitude/longitude for the place.
7. Save.

A Location belongs to one Site

Every Location is tied to exactly one Site. That Site is set when you create a root Location, and children inherit it. You identify which Site a Location belongs to from the Location form and from Site detail pages under Dashboard → Sites.

Location hierarchy (building → floor → room) stays available inside that Site. Nesting does not cross Sites.

Locations are hierarchical

Locations nest to any depth by way of a parent, always under one Site:

Site: Manchester Campus
 └── Building A
      └── Floor 2
           └── Room 204

This is what lets multi-site and multi-campus estates work without a flat naming convention. You do not need "Manchester – Building A – Floor 2 – Room 204" as a single string.

See Hierarchical location structure.

How Assets use Location

Assets are assigned to a Location. Because the Location belongs to a Site, the asset sits under that Site automatically:

Site → Location → Asset

See Site, Location and asset organization and How to assign an asset to a Location.

Naming locations

Name each level for what it is, not its full path. The hierarchy supplies the context — the room is "Room 204", not "Manchester Building A Floor 2 Room 204".

Be consistent across branches. If one building uses floors and another uses levels, filtering becomes guesswork.

Include identifying detail people actually use. If everyone calls it "the north workshop", that is a better name than "Workshop 2".

Location is not…

Not a Site. A Site is the operational boundary (plant, campus). A Location is a place inside it.

Not a department. Where an asset sits is a location; which budget owns it is a department.

Not a geo position. A geo position is a coordinate pushed in by a tracking system. A location is an organizational place. Sending coordinates does not change which building an asset belongs to.

Not custody. Who has an asset right now is a checkout.

Archiving and deleting

Locations can be archived (soft) or deleted (hard) when they are empty.

Before archiving or deleting a location, move the assets in it — and archive or move any child locations first. Both actions are blocked while active assets or child locations remain.

Archiving keeps history attributable and is reversible. Deleting permanently removes an empty location.

Common mistakes

Building the whole hierarchy before adding any assets. Start with the levels you need now. Locations are easy to add later.

Encoding the department in the location name. "Floor 2 – Finance" breaks the moment Finance moves.

Going too deep. Building → floor → room covers most organizations. Shelf-level detail is rarely worth the filtering cost.

Creating a location per asset. Locations are places, not asset records.

Treating a Site as a Location. Create the Site at Dashboard → Sites, then create Locations under it.

Troubleshooting

I can't create a location. You need permission to create assets (Owner, Admin, or Manager).

The name is rejected. Location names must be unique among siblings under the same parent. The same name can exist under a different parent or in a different Site. An archived sibling may already hold the name.

A location isn't in the asset form dropdown. Check it is not archived.

I can't delete a location. It still has assigned assets or child locations. Move or archive those first. Empty locations can be deleted; otherwise archive them.

I don't see the Site I expect. Create or un-archive it at Dashboard → Sites. Soft-archived Sites do not appear in the Location Site picker.

Filtering by a parent location returns nothing. Check the assets are actually filed against a location beneath it.

Related articles

• What are Sites?
• How to manage Sites
• Main Office — the default Site
• Hierarchical location structure
• How to move assets between locations
• Location reports
• Categories, Sites, Locations and Departments
• Site limits by plan