How to use Tote- Picking and Shipping

Owned by Johannes Sebastian Nielsen
Last updated: Aug 23, 2021
2 min read

Description

Enables you to perform Picking / Shipping operations more efficiently by consolidating several orders onto Pick orders and Shipments.

  • Saving on Shipping costs, 
  • Picking efficiently for several orders 
  • and tracking containers, are all benefits

 

What is a Tote

A container/box/bag designed for shipping, marked with a unique barcode.

 

Benefits 

You can pick Multiple Orders to the Same Recipient into a Single Container/Tote and ship all the orders together on the same shipment.

  • Reduce shipping costs
  • Reduce handling and complexity
  • Avoid wasting packing material


Or you can pick Multiple Orders to Different Recipients into a Multiple Totes in "One Go".

The Pick lines will be sorted by Bin.

  • The warehouse worker will only have to visit each Bin once
  • Reduce time picking 


Background

Tote picking has been designed for Web shops with these common challenges

  • High number of orders with Low number of items

  • Picking Only One order at a time is Not efficient

  • Many orders = many shipments = much paperwork

Tote shipping can provide easy shipping from the Mobile device

  • The shipping process can also be performed efficiently from the Mobile Device, by using Tote-Shipping. 
  • Simply scanning each Tote will post the shipment.

 

Limitations

  • Tote-Picked orders are afterwards Tote-Shipped
    • The two goes together

  • Only available with Advanced Warehousing

    • You must use Warehouse Pick / Shipment documents 


Supported documents

  • Warehouse Shipment
  • Warehouse Pick
  • Inventory Pick


High level process

Combine Sales orders/lines

This happens when:

  • Multiple Sales Orders are added to a Warehouse Shipment document.
  • Multiple Shipment are handled by the "Pick Worksheet".

Grouping

When/how should the system ask for Tote ID:

  • This is determined by the  "Tote per." -setting (see below)

  

On the mobile devices

Tote Picking 

  • The regular Pick functionality will ask for Tote ID when needed

Tote Shipping

  • A separate icon on the Main Menu


  

How to set it up

In Mobile WMS Setup:

Field: "Enable Tote Picking"
  • Enables Tote-functionality
 
Field "Tote per."

There are three different ways of grouping totes together

  • Destination No.
    • Group all Orders/Lines for a Customer into one Tote
    • Used in combination with a new "Warehouse Shipment" document

  • Source No.
    • Group all Lines of an Order/Source Document into one Tote

  • Whse. Document No.
    • Group all Orders/Lines for a Shipment  in one work flow
    • Used in combination with the "Pick Worksheet" page


Usage example in steps in Business Central / NAV

In Mobile WMS Setup

  • Set "Tote per" to "Destination no." 

Create your order(s)

  1. Create a new blank "Warehouse Shipment" document
    1. Select "Get source Documents" to add your Order(s)
    2. Select "Create Pick"
    3. Set Sorting Method to Bin

You can now use the Tote -picking /  Shipping on the Mobile Device


How it works behind the scenes

For a descirption of the logic on the mobile app, see Collector Step Tote.




See also