Bonded warehouse vs warehouse stock tracking: what differs between them

The key difference between a bonded warehouse and a general warehouse is the customs status of the goods in stock. A bonded warehouse can hold goods whose customs procedures are not yet complete, so stock records are kept together with declarations, storage fees and liquidation tracking, in a way that can be accounted for to the customs authority. In a general (non-bonded) warehouse, goods are stored as the customer's stock and tracking is built on product codes, locations and order reservations. Boran Software's BoranWise logistics software offers separate modules for the two: bonded warehouse management and general warehouse management.

What does bonded warehouse stock cover?

BoranWise's bonded warehouse module tracks the entry, put-away (location) and exit of goods arriving at the warehouse, whether they are still under customs control or already cleared. When incoming cargo is accepted, an automatic e-mail goes to the relevant company, and documents such as the warehouse entry list, labels, CMR, summary declaration and warehouse release slip are printed instantly.

Releases from a bonded warehouse are often partial. A cargo can be released in full at once, or part of it can be released with a deduction; a wrongly recorded deduction can be reversed and the goods returned to stock. Transferred declarations are tracked too: if there are several transfers under one declaration, all of them are visible on a single screen.

Bonded stock also has an official side. According to an announcement Boran Software shared in 2018, the amendment to Turkey's Customs Regulation published in Official Gazette No. 30141 of 1 August 2017 redefined the conditions for opening and operating bonded warehouses in Annex 80, and from 1 January 2018 bonded warehouse stock records were to include the information in "Annex 83: Bonded Warehouse Stock Ledger Table to be kept by operators". In BoranWise, Excel files from the YGMS program are uploaded at entry and exit, and EK-83 reports are produced automatically.

Storage fees, handling and liquidation

The second thing that sets bonded stock tracking apart is charging. In BoranWise, storage fees (ardiye) are calculated automatically from an unlimited number of company- and warehouse-specific prices or from a price list based on the tonnage released, and the invoice is created automatically. Invoice components such as storage and handling are set up as parameters. As a result, the storage fee can be quoted at once when a customer calls, and the total storage fee of the cargo still in the warehouse can be seen at any moment for budgeting.

Liquidation risk is specific to bonded warehouses. The program alerts users to goods approaching liquidation and can send the customer an automatic e-mail a set time before the liquidation date. Uninvoiced items, warehouse guarantees and a goods value report for fire insurance are tracked in the same module.

What does general warehouse stock cover?

In the general warehouse module, the focus is the product rather than customs status. Any number of warehouses can be defined so that the stock of independent sections is tracked separately. Customers' products and stock codes can be imported in bulk from Excel per customer, and product groups, a base unit and conversion units are defined.

Goods registered on the product entry screen are received with a handheld terminal and put away to a location. Short-received items appear in red on the main screen, and right-clicking a product to open its product statement lists all of its movements.

On the outbound side, orders drive everything. The customer's shipping instruction is opened as an order manually or from an Excel file. When the order is approved, the items to be shipped are reserved in their quantities and cannot be reserved again or taken out of the warehouse by another order. Picking is done with the handheld terminal, and the delivery note is printed once the order is closed. Reports show stock per product and per shelf.

The differences at a glance

• What defines stock: in a bonded warehouse, the declaration and customs status; in a general warehouse, the product code and unit.
• How goods leave: in a bonded warehouse, full or partial release; in a general warehouse, an approved order, reservation and delivery note.
• Charging: in a bonded warehouse, an automatic invoice with storage and handling components.
• Time risk: in a bonded warehouse, liquidation alerts and an automatic e-mail to the customer.
• Official reporting: in a bonded warehouse, the EK-83 report from YGMS data and customs integration.

Common ground: the yard and customer access

In both setups, movement in the yard is recorded in the system as it happens. In the bonded warehouse, the times when vehicles join the queue, enter and leave the weighbridge, dock at the ramp and leave the site are reported as KPIs, and the weighbridge integration captures weight automatically. Mobile screens provide storage location lookup, weighing lookup and stock reports.

On the customer side, both setups meet the same need: seeing stock without making a phone call. With BoranWise Online Stock Tracking, introduced in 2025, customers follow their stock in the warehouse 24/7, and the warehouse web interface has three permission levels: Admin, Salesperson and Customer.

Summary

Bonded and general warehouse stock tracking share the same entry-location-exit logic, but in a bonded warehouse the declaration, storage fees, liquidation and the EK-83 report come first, while in a general warehouse the product code, location, order reservation and delivery note do. BoranWise covers the two needs with separate modules, connects the yard to the system through handheld terminals and weighbridge integration, and gives customers online stock tracking.