Why should I use a barcode scanner while picking?

Welcome to a new series: Ask Casper. In this series, I (Casper), co-founder of Picqer, answer your questions about warehouses, fulfillment and inventory management.

The starting point

I get this question often, so it’s a great one to kick off Ask Casper.

Many e-commerce warehouses start out like this: they print orders, pick the products, and put them in the box. At the end, they close the orders in the software. Often they even close multiple orders at once. A lot of webshop platforms like Magento, Lightspeed and WooCommerce are set up to work this way by default.

It’s not ideal, but if that’s your current process, then yes—scanning each product will take more time during the pick process than you’re used to.

But that’s not the only thing that matters.

Fewer mistakes saves time

We see that webshops working the way described above typically have an error rate of 1 to 4%, depending on the type of products. A mistake could be sending the wrong product, sending too few, or sending too many.

What happens when an order goes wrong?

• The customer gets frustrated and contacts your customer service (how long does a phone call take?)
• The order might be returned (extra shipping cost and warehouse handling)
• You’ll need to send the correct product (more shipping costs, handling, and packaging)

How much time does that cost?

• Customer service call: at least 3 minutes
• Handling the return in the warehouse: 5 minutes
• Picking and shipping the correct product: 2 minutes
• 2x extra shipping + packaging: ~€10 (comparable to 20 minutes of work)

So one mistake costs at least 30 minutes.

With a 1% error rate (1 in 100 orders goes wrong), you lose 18 seconds per order on average.

That’s the best-case scenario—usually, the cost is even higher and more orders go wrong.

Can you scan in 18 seconds?

So the real question is: can you scan all products in an order in under 18 seconds on average? If yes, then using barcode scanners doesn’t cost you any extra time—and you can safely go ahead and implement them.

Don’t process orders in batches but complete them one by one? In that case, using a barcode scanner is only about 5 seconds slower than marking an order as ready manually.

The benefits

Now that we’ve established that barcode scanning doesn’t cost you time, what are the benefits? Quite a few, actually.

Accurate stock levels

Sometimes you accidentally send too many items or the wrong size that still works out for the customer. If the customer doesn’t report it, your stock becomes inaccurate. You’ll have less of one item than you think and more of another—leading to problems when the next customer orders a product you no longer have.

With scanning, the right product is always deducted from stock, so your stock stays accurate and products that are truly out of stock are marked as such.

Happy customers and happy employees

When orders are shipped quickly and correctly, you make customers happy—which leads to better reviews and increased sales. And for your team, it’s more enjoyable to help happy customers than to deal with complaints.

My advice

So here’s my advice: if you can process an average order with a barcode scanner without it taking 18 seconds longer, go for it. You’ll earn back that time quickly.