Warehouse labor management software is bought to do one thing the spreadsheet stopped doing well: hold a standard for each process and compare every shift against it, per person and per client, without anyone retyping the hours. Before it can report anything it has to compute the same four figures a worksheet does, the pick hours a day of lines needs, the pickers that is on a shift, the week's cost and the cost per line, and a small operator should be able to check the software's arithmetic against its own. This page is about what the software should compute and how to check it; the guide it supports walks warehouse labor management as a discipline, and the free worksheet on this site works the figures.
The standard is the software's only real input
Everything the software reports flows from the standard per process: lines a picker hour, cases a receiver hour, orders a packer hour, measured in your building. A vendor that ships default standards is shipping someone else's building. The worksheet on this site takes your standard as an input, 60 lines an hour on the worked example, and publishes none of its own.
The four computations to check
Pick hours: lines over the standard, 20 on 1,200 lines at 60. Pickers: pick hours over productive shift hours, rounded up, three on an eight-hour shift at 85% utilisation. Week's cost: pickers times hours times days times a loaded rate, $2,640 at $22. Cost per line: the week's cost over the week's lines, 44 cents. If the software's numbers differ from the worksheet's on the same inputs, ask the vendor why before you trust the performance report.
What the software adds that a worksheet cannot
The clock: actual hours per person per process, so standard hours earned over hours paid is a measured performance per shift and a trend per person, and drift is seen the week it starts. That is the record, and it is what Pickpathly Pro keeps per process with each week's actual against the standard.
Questions people ask about warehouse labor management software
What does warehouse labor management software do?
Holds a standard per process, computes the hours and headcount a day of work needs, costs the week, and reports actual hours against standard per shift, person and client. The worksheet on this site works the computations; the record keeps the comparison.
How do I check a labour management vendor's numbers?
Run the same inputs, lines, standard, shift hours, utilisation, days and rate, through the free worksheet and compare pick hours, pickers, the week's cost and the cost per line. Differences are usually the utilisation assumption or a hidden default standard.
Is labour management software worth it for a small warehouse?
When the team is large enough that nobody can hold the trend in their head, and the standard is measured rather than guessed. Until then the worksheet and a record of each week's actual do the job.