Totes

A tote is a reusable crate or bin that a picker carries through the warehouse. Picked units go into a tote and stay there until they are packed. Each tote has a unique name (usually printed as a barcode on the tote) and belongs to one location.

Totes aren't storage: they don't have a bin location and they don't show up as a column on the inventory overview. Instead, Boxture links each picked order line unit to the tote it was picked into. That way it always knows which tote holds which units for which order.

This page explains how totes behave in daily work. Creating totes, setting their weight and activating or disabling them is done by an administrator under Admin › Warehousing › Totes or by import. See Warehousing setup.

Tote states

State	Meaning
Concept	Newly created, not usable yet.
Active	Can be used for picking.
Disabled	Taken out of use. A tote can only be disabled when it is empty.

An administrator activates and disables totes, one by one or through the totes import (column Event with activate or disable).

Totes in picking

When you pick, you scan or choose a tote, and every unit you pick is recorded as being in that tote. Boxture applies these rules:

• The tote must belong to the same location as the pick list.
• A tote is used for one pick list at a time. While it still holds units from one pick list, it can't be used for another one.
• On a batch pick list (several orders picked together), a tote holds units of one order only. Use a separate tote per order.

The picked units are in state Picked. See Inventory items and states. A whole container that is picked in one go also goes into the tote.

See Pick lists and Picking on mobile for the picking process itself.

Totes in packing

At the packing station you enter the tote. Boxture then knows which order and which picked units to expect. When you pack a unit, it is released from the tote. If you scan units from a different tote than the one they were picked into, packing refuses them with a wrong tote message.

Once every unit in a tote has been packed, the tote is empty again and free for the next pick list. See Packing.

Finding what is in a tote

The tote list (Admin › Warehousing › Totes) shows, for each tote, its Name, State and the Orders whose units are currently in it. A tote with no orders listed is empty.

Labels for totes can be printed through papers. They appear on the tote's Papers tab. See Papers.

Tips

• Give totes short, scannable names. Names are stored in capitals and must be unique within a location.
• If you record a tote's Weight, also choose its weight unit.
• If a tote seems stuck (it still shows an order but is physically empty), look up that order. Its picked units are still linked to the tote until they are packed or unpicked. See Picking problems.