Your first location
— and what counts as one.

The way you split your business into locations in nouz changes everything downstream — what your daily Home tile shows, how Statistics ranks days, what monthly P&L exports look like, how Stripe bills you. Getting this right on day one saves restructuring later. Fortunately, the rule is short.

01 What counts as a location

A location in nouz is the smallest unit that can stand on its own — one set of fixed costs, one P&L, one set of products. Every revenue entry, every expense, every fixed cost belongs to exactly one location, and one location's data is never mixed with another's.

In code terms, every database row carries a location_id. The middleware enforces it on every read and every write — there's no way to accidentally see another location's data, even if you tried to forge the request. This isolation is the whole reason locations exist as a primitive.

02 Adding one

On Settings → Locations, click + Add location. You'll see a small form:

1. 1
   Name

   What you and your staff will call it. We recommend the street name over the brand name — easier to switch between in a hurry when you have multiple shops on the same brand.

2. 2
   Country

   Sets the default VAT rate and number format for this location's entries.

3. 3
   Save

   It's immediately switchable from the location picker in the header (top-right on every authed tab).

03 When to split, when to lump

Four scenarios that confuse new owners:

• One shop, two registers. One location. The registers are just channels into the same P&L. Don't create a location per till.
• One brand, two streets. Two locations. Different rent, different staff, different daily numbers — they need their own P&Ls to be useful.
• One shop, online + counter. One location — unless the online side has materially different costs (different shipping carrier, different payment processor with different fees). Most owners start with one and split later if the online channel grows into something with its own cost structure.
• Pop-up market stall once a week. One location — log it as part of the main shop's revenue. If it grows into a regular weekly thing with its own variable costs, then split it.

The unifying question to ask: do these two things have their own fixed costs? If yes (different rent, different base salaries), they're different locations. If no (they share the back office, the same rent line, the same insurance), they're the same location with multiple revenue channels.

04 Plan caps

Starter is 1 location. Growth is 3. Pro is 5. If you try to add past the cap, nouz prompts you to upgrade — no form, no negotiation. Archive a location and the slot frees up immediately. See Location caps for the full table and how it interacts with billing.