Picking is where order accuracy is won or lost. A mispick costs you a return, a credit, and a customer’s trust, so the job of a good warehouse system is to make the right pick the easy pick. Loaditude turns orders into structured picking work, batches that work into waves so a picker walks the floor once instead of many times, and verifies every item by scan before it leaves. This guide walks through the workflow step by step.
1. Turn orders into pick work
Fulfilment starts with an order. When an order is ready to ship, it becomes a pick list: the SKUs and quantities to collect, and the storage locations to collect them from. Those locations are the same bins you put stock away into at goods-in, so a picker is always sent to where the stock actually is, not to an abstract number.
You can jump straight from oversight into action: clicking a bar in the dashboard “Orders by status” chart opens the picking list filtered to that status, so a supervisor can see what is waiting and release it without hunting through a long list.
2. Release a picking wave
Picking one order at a time means walking the same aisles over and over. A picking wave fixes that. Releasing a wave groups several orders together so a picker collects their combined demand in a single walk, following a multi-bin pick path that orders the bins efficiently. One trip down an aisle serves every order in the wave that needs something from it.
This is the single biggest lever on picker productivity in a busy 3PL. The more orders share a route, the fewer steps each unit costs to pick, and the wave gives you a clean unit of work to assign, track and measure.
3. Work the wave from the queue
Once a wave is released it appears as work to be done. The picker works through it bin by bin in path order, confirming the quantity taken at each location. Because the wave already knows the combined demand and the route, the picker is not deciding what to do next, they are simply executing the next confirmed step. That keeps new staff productive quickly and keeps experienced staff moving.
4. Scan to verify, with barcode QC
Every pick is verified by scan rather than by eye. As an item is picked and again as it is packed, Loaditude runs a barcode quality check. The clever part is that every product is scannable: a scan passes if it matches the product’s main barcode, any of the extra barcodes you have registered against it (for example an outer-case code and an inner-unit code), or the SKU itself as a fallback. You are never blocked because a carton happens to carry the inner code instead of the outer one.
See Inventory, products and barcodes for how to register multiple barcodes against a single SKU so this scan-to-verify step is as forgiving as possible on the floor.
5. Handle shorts as partial picks
Reality intrudes: a bin is short, a unit is damaged, the count was out. Rather than failing the whole order, Loaditude supports partial (picked-short) handling at the order line level. The order records what was actually fulfilled, so the rest can be backordered, re-picked from another location, or chased, and your numbers reflect the truth instead of an optimistic plan. The order carries its own fulfilment state through this, so everyone downstream can see exactly where it stands.
6. Pack, with quality holds enforced
Packing is the last gate before dispatch, and Loaditude treats it as a hard control rather than a formality. If a quality inspector has placed an item on hold, the system prevents packing that item and blocks the order from being completed until the hold is released or rejected. That gives your QC team a real gate at the warehouse instead of relying on someone shouting across the floor.
For batch-controlled stock, picking can apply FEFO or FIFO selection so the right batch leaves first (first-expired or first-in), with a pack-QC re-scan to confirm it. That protects you on short-dated goods and gives you a defensible story on traceability.
7. Keep stock accurate as you go
Accurate picking depends on accurate stock, and the two reinforce each other in Loaditude. Confirming an item as packed writes a stock movement record, so the full pick-pack-dispatch lifecycle appears in the movement audit trail. You are never guessing how a unit left the building.
- Movements capture every change of state, including the pack step, so the history is complete.
- Transfers move stock between locations when you reorganise or replenish a pick face, keeping each bin’s count right.
- Adjustments let you correct a count when a physical check disagrees with the system, with the change recorded rather than silently overwritten.
The payoff is that the next wave you release is built on numbers you can trust, which is exactly what makes scan-verified, wave-based picking fast instead of frustrating.
Why run picking this way
- Fewer steps per order because waves combine demand into one efficient, multi-bin walk.
- Fewer mispicks because every item is scan-verified, and any of a product’s barcodes or its SKU will pass.
- Honest orders because shorts are recorded as partial picks rather than hidden.
- A hard quality gate because holds block packing and completion until they are cleared.
- Trustworthy stock because packing writes a movement and the full lifecycle is auditable.
Where to go next
- Inventory, products and barcodes covers SKUs, multiple barcodes and stock levels that picking relies on.
- Kitting and value-added services covers building finished kits, which draw on the same located stock.
- Warehouse reports and stock analysis covers measuring throughput and checking stock with the Stock Picture report.