Glossary
The words on this site, defined in a sentence or two.
Warehouse, freight and quality terms as they are used in ShipFlow, RateFlow and QualityFlow.
- 3PL (third-party logistics)
- A company that stores and ships goods on behalf of other businesses, its clients. A regional 3PL typically runs one or a few warehouses and serves many clients from the same building.
- WMS (warehouse management system)
- Software that records what a warehouse receives, stores, picks, packs and ships, and where every unit is. A multi-client WMS does this for many clients at once while keeping their data apart. ShipFlow is one.
- Multi-client WMS
- A warehouse system in which several clients share one installation but each sees only its own items, orders and reports. ShipFlow enforces this with row-level security in the database rather than by convention.
- Client portal
- A login a 3PL gives each client to see its own orders, inventory, receipts, invoices and reports, place orders, upload documents and connect its own sales channels.
- Client versus customer
- In a 3PL, the client is the company the warehouse works for. The customer is the person or business the client's order ships to. ShipFlow keeps the two words apart everywhere.
- License plate (LP)
- A tracked container of stock, usually a pallet or carton, with its own barcode. Moving the license plate moves everything on it.
- Lot and expiry
- A production batch of an item, often with an expiry date. Lot control means the warehouse knows which lot went to which order, so a recall can be answered from a report.
- Unit-level UID / serial
- An identifier unique to one physical unit. Unit-level tracking answers where is this exact one, not just how many are on hand.
- Pack levels
- Pallet, case, inner pack and each: the levels an item can be handled at, each with its own barcode. A B2B order allocates cases; a DTC order allocates eaches from the same stock.
- ASN (advance shipping notice)
- Notice from a supplier or client of what is about to arrive, used to create an expected receipt the warehouse counts against.
- B2B and DTC
- Business-to-business orders ship pallets and cases to another company, usually against a purchase order. Direct-to-consumer orders ship parcels to a shopper, usually from an online store.
- FBA prep
- Preparing inventory for Amazon's Fulfillment by Amazon programme: labelling, packing to Amazon's requirements and shipping it into Amazon's warehouses.
- LTL and FTL
- Less-than-truckload freight shares a trailer with other shippers' pallets and is priced by freight class and weight. Full truckload is one shipper's freight filling the trailer.
- BOL and PRO number
- A bill of lading is the freight carrier's contract and receipt for a shipment. A PRO number is the carrier's tracking reference for it.
- Hazmat, SDS and COA
- Hazardous materials need a UN number, class and packing group on the item. A safety data sheet (SDS) describes the product; a certificate of analysis (COA) certifies one lot. ShipFlow merges the two into an outbound docs pack.
- Wave
- A group of orders released to be picked together, built from a label batch or a list of order numbers.
- EDI (940 / 945)
- Electronic data interchange: standard documents trading partners exchange. A 940 is a warehouse shipping order; a 945 is the shipment advice back; 943 and 944 are stock transfer and receipt advice; 856 is the advance ship notice.
- NCR (nonconformance report)
- A record that something did not meet a requirement, what was done about it, and whether the customer was told. In QualityFlow the system decides when a quality event becomes an NCR.
- CAPA (corrective and preventive action)
- The action taken to remove the cause of a nonconformance, with an owner, a due date and a later check that it worked.
- ISO 9001
- The international standard for quality management systems. Certification is granted by an accredited body after an audit. Readiness is how far an organisation's documents and evidence satisfy each clause.
- Self-hosted (Licensed)
- Software you buy and run on your own infrastructure, with the data never leaving it. 3PL TechFlow sells every product this way, with a quarterly maintenance and updates fee. See pricing.
- SaaS (software as a service)
- Software the vendor hosts, runs, secures and updates, paid by subscription. 3PL TechFlow's Full SaaS is priced monthly per client.
See the terms in use.
A walkthrough runs a receipt, an order and a client through the software live.