Fulfillment management: the floor scans, counts and confirms

One floor law

Pick the item the system named, at the bin it named, confirm the count, pack it, label it, ship it. Every step scanned; every confirm a row with a name on it. That is the whole law, and it is the same on the PDA in the aisle, at the keyboard-first station console, and on the desktop.

DockingWare keeps two workflows for two kinds of order and does not blur them. Direct-to-consumer orders run a continuous guided flow: scan the item, take the ordered pieces, choose packaging, buy the label, stamp carrier and tracking. Wholesale orders run pick tasks and pack tasks with quantities, lots and cases. They share the inventory primitives underneath and nothing above them. A wholesale shipment never borrows the consumer path, and the desktop wholesale screens never show a consumer order.

Pick: the bin is real

A pick line names a bin from the location master and the pick face it belongs to. The PDA asks for the location scan first, then the product scan, then the count. A prefix never verifies; a code either matches exactly or is refused by name. If the coverage of a pick face is partial, the task says which bin has the stock instead of sending the picker to an empty shelf.

Pick-to-tote adds a third way to run the floor: one operator picks several orders into totes and a bench packs them. A tote is bound to one order at a time, carried, released and rebound, and the system refuses, by name, a tote that is already in use or a pack that arrives without one.

Pack: the last check before the customer

Packing is where a picking mistake is caught or shipped. The station console packs consumer orders keyboard first, scan by scan, and never paints a line as verified before the lines have loaded: unknown is its own state with its own words. The desktop wholesale pack verifies the same way the PDA does: scan the product, count, confirm, and the confirm records who verified, when, and that it was by scan. That witness is on the pack line, not in a log nobody reads.

Boxes, mailers and fillers are inventory. They are received and adjusted with reasons, consumed when the pack is confirmed, watched for low stock, and their dimensions and tare fill the label step automatically.

Ship: one decrement, one row

A shipment decrements on-hand once, through a shared primitive, and writes the movement row that explains it. The label is bought at the bench, rated across carriers, voidable and re-buyable, and the tracking number is stamped on the order and pushed to the store without anyone typing it. When the carrier does not answer, the bench captures carrier and tracking by hand and the order still leaves. Carrier cost and the amount billed to the client are stored separately, which is what a 3PL needs to invoice.

What shipped, said plainly

A pick line that cannot be found is closed short from the floor with a reason. The remainder goes back to available stock and the shortage stays on the order. The packing bench has the same close for a line that is missing from the tote or damaged in hand: the reason is recorded on the pack line and the shortage stays named. Both shipped in v2.21.0.

Stock that entered as whole cases can be picked by the piece, on every channel. On the pallet, the case simply becomes pieces; nothing is added or removed, so no movement is written (v2.22.0). On the stock record, Ship Confirm opens the fewest cases it needs and writes the opened case as a pair of transfer rows, so the ledger still explains every unit (v2.23.0). These lines used to say what was missing. They now say what shipped and in which release, because a page that lists what works without saying when is not a page you can trust.

Who this is for

Warehouses shipping both store orders and wholesale orders from one building, who want each to run its own way without two systems. Operations leads who want to know, for any shipped box, who verified what was in it.

What you can verify

Every rule above is enforced in code and covered by a test that failed before it passed. The changelog names the release where each one landed.