Warehouse Reporting
Fulfilment performance reporting
Build a fulfilment scorecard that separates order speed, dispatch, delivery, errors and unresolved exceptions.
A useful fulfilment report shows what was promised, what happened and which orders still need a decision. Start with a scorecard for cycle time, dispatch, delivery and errors. Keep unresolved cases alongside the rates so an average cannot hide work that has stalled.
Define the events
Document the event behind each measure: order accepted, eligible for warehouse release, work released, pick started, pick completed, pack completed, label created, handed to a carrier and delivered. Record each event’s source, time zone and order, fulfilment-part or parcel ID.
Status names can describe different events. For reporting, distinguish label creation from carrier handover; use the event that answers the question being reported.
For every measure, specify its population, calculation, reporting period and treatment of missing records. State whether an order enters a period when it was accepted, became due, was dispatched or was completed. Show cancelled orders, collection orders and split shipments according to explicit rules.
Build the scorecard
| View | Question | Supporting detail |
|---|---|---|
| Order cycle time | Where does an order wait before handover? | Stage timestamps and open orders |
| On-time dispatch | Were required parcels handed over by the dispatch commitment? | Deadline, cut-off rule and handover evidence |
| Delivery performance | Did required parcels meet the customer delivery commitment? | Delivery evidence and outcomes still unknown |
| Fulfilment errors | How many completed orders had a verified defect? | Affected orders, incidents and discovery stage |
Show counts with rates, especially when the population is small or changing. Segment by warehouse, service, order pattern or shift only when the distinction points to a possible action. Keep definitions stable across periods.
Reconcile the records
Keep a stable customer order ID and the line, fulfilment-part, parcel and tracking IDs beneath it. An order-level result counts the customer order once, but it must account for every required part. Show partly dispatched orders separately until the chosen completion rule is met.
Compare orders due for warehouse work with accepted instructions, completed work with prepared parcels, and parcels handed over with available carrier records. Investigate unmatched IDs and events that arrive out of sequence.
Its All work page distinguishes planned, in-progress and completed work.
Keep work counts distinct from order outcomes
Warehouse work can include picking, moving and counting, recorded through the Warehouse Management mobile app. Keep counts of that work distinct from counts of customer orders: a completed task is not, by itself, evidence that an order or all its required parcels are complete.
When a warehouse system works with an external ERP, clarify which system owns order and financial processing and which handles warehouse logistics. In Microsoft’s Warehouse management only mode example, Supply Chain Management handles logistics while an external ERP manages order and financial processing. Set the reconciliation boundary accordingly, so teams know which system must resolve an order-level discrepancy and which reports warehouse activity.
Turn a movement into a decision
Review open exceptions during the shift. Review rates and cycle-time distributions once the relevant orders have reached an outcome. When a measure changes, inspect affected orders before assigning a cause: a longer cycle might reflect an approval hold, a pick queue, a different order mix or a handover delay.
Give a recurring problem an owner, a process change and a later check using the same measure. Show missing data as a reporting gap. A labelled parcel should not become a dispatched parcel, or an untracked parcel a delivered one, merely to complete a chart.
Make review authority explicit
A warehouse work user is associated with a worker in Human resources. A worker account can have multiple work users. Each work user has a default warehouse and a menu that controls which mobile-device workflows are available.
A report that attributes decisions to users should identify the work user and warehouse. It should not assume one account represents one person or location.
For inventory-count discrepancies, the Is a cycle count supervisor setting determines whether a user can process an adjustment or whether another person must review it first. Show an adjustment awaiting review separately from one already processed, and record the decision owner and outcome so that an unresolved review does not disappear into a completed-work total.
In this guide
- Measuring order cycle time by process stageDefine order cycle timestamps, calculate stage intervals and account for split, incomplete and held orders.
- Comparing on-time dispatch with delivery performanceDefine separate dispatch and delivery commitments, calculate rates and keep missing parcel outcomes visible.
- Reporting fulfilment errors per completed orderDefine completed orders and verified defects, then report affected orders and error incidents with clear denominators.
- Building a warehouse exception dashboardTurn warehouse exceptions into an owned queue with source records, deadlines, next actions and closure checks.
