Pick, Pack, & Label: A Deep Dive

Welcome to our blog series, “How To Optimize Your Fulfillment Strategy.”

Whether you’re an experienced business owner or just starting out, there’s always room to make improvements to your strategy. Throughout this blog series, we’ll deep-dive into best practices for various aspects of fulfillment.

Previously, we discussed product syncing and custom orders. Today, we’ll dissect the specifics of pick and pack operations as well as printing labels for orders. These three steps are vital to fulfilling an order and go hand-in-hand to accomplish this goal.

Pick, Pack, & Label

Pick

Picking is the process of selecting specific inventory items needed for a particular order. When a seller receives an order and is ready to fulfill it, the first step is to look at the pick list for that order.

Generally, a pick list details what items to pick, where those items are located in the inventory, and the quantity needed. Once all items are selected for the seller’s current orders, the next step is to look at the pack list.

Pack

Packing is the process of placing order items into the correct shipping packaging. Generally, a pack list will include order items, the customer’s shipping address, and the ideal shipping packaging selection for that order.

Typically, there are two order packing methods that sellers use: common order and order by order. Sellers who group their orders by common order will combine any identical orders into groups before packaging, while sellers who pack order by order pack orders in the sequence that they were received. Once everything is sorted and packed, the final step is to label each package.

Label

Labeling is the final step in the fulfillment process before shipping a package to the customer. The label adheres to the shipping packaging and includes information such as the carrier ID, business information, customer information, and any special note.

Best Practices

When it comes to optimizing pick and pack operations, here are a few of our recommendations:

When Picking Products, Organize them in a Staging Area by Type

Once a seller has picked all of the products needed for each order, these orders should be placed in a specific area. This area is called the staging area. We also recommend organizing these items by type, grouping any identical products together.

When Packing Orders, Organize Orders by Common Order

While sellers can choose to organize orders by common order or order by order, we recommend the common order method. This is because, when using the order by order method, counting incorrectly can easily result in incorrect orders. If sellers sort by common orders, they will know that they have a certain amount of each type of order and won’t have to keep track of their order numbers.

When Packing Orders, Sort Common Orders by Carrier

In addition to sorting by common orders, we also recommend sorting orders by carrier. If sellers are using multiple shipping carriers and try to ship a package with the wrong carrier, they could be penalized with a fee, have their package sent back, or their package could get lost in the mail. For this reason, it makes sense to sort common orders by carrier.

How Soapbox Can Help

The Soapbox software allows e-commerce sellers to print their pick list, pack list, and purchase and print labels in one convenient location.

To learn more about how our software can help you with your pick and pack operations, create a free account. You can also reach out to us at support@soap-bx.com with any software questions.

In our next edition of “How To Optimize Your Fulfillment Strategy,” we’ll discuss best practices for fulfilling orders on multiple storefronts and marketplaces.