Warehouse Scan-Based Tracking: How to Keep Inventory Visible While It Moves

Warehouse problems rarely start as big disasters. They start as tiny gaps. A pallet gets staged without a scan. A replenishment move happens fast, and someone plans to scan it later. A return lands in a corner for "tomorrow." Those gaps pile up until your inventory number becomes a suggestion, not a fact. Warehouse scan-based tracking is how you close those gaps and keep inventory visible while it is moving.

If you are selling across channels, accuracy is not optional. A Shopify store will keep taking orders as long as it believes inventory exists. Retailers will keep issuing chargebacks if shipments are short or mislabeled. Customer service will keep getting blamed for problems that started on the floor. Scan-based tracking does not eliminate every mistake, but it makes mistakes traceable and fixable, which is what scaling brands need.

Tracking is not a report, it is a chain of verified events

Some 3PLs talk about tracking like it is a report you download at the end of the day. Real tracking is a chain of verified events that mirrors reality in the moment. The warehouse receives product, moves it, stores it, picks it, packs it, and ships it. A strong system records those transitions as they happen, not after a shift ends.

Bryan Wright, CTO and COO of G10 Fulfillment, described what separates good tracking from bad tracking: "A good WMS tracks inventory through the warehouse at every point that you touch it." The key phrase is every point. If you only track inventory when it reaches a final bin, you create blind zones where inventory exists physically but not digitally. That is how oversells happen, and that is how teams waste hours hunting for product.

Bryan gave a practical example of the level of visibility scan-based tracking can provide: "At any point in time, I know that Bobby has this product on fork 10 right now, and if I needed to go find that product, I just got to go find Bobby on fork 10." That is what it means to keep inventory visible while it moves. The system is not guessing. It is recording.

Why paper and manual work create inventory drift

Paper is tempting during peak. It feels faster. It is also how inventory drifts away from your system. If a move happens without a scan, your WMS has no idea it happened. If your WMS has no idea it happened, your storefront and your planning tools are building on a false foundation.

Connor Perkins, Director of Fulfillment at G10 Fulfillment, described the baseline that prevents drift: "You want everything to be scanned in the warehouse, nothing done on paper." That standard is not about perfectionism. It is about creating a transaction history that can be trusted.

Connor also described the cost of weak accuracy. Customers come in after bad experiences because they were "losing money by shipping wrong items or wrong quantities of items." A lot of those wrong shipments begin with inventory drift upstream. Scan-based tracking prevents drift, which reduces downstream errors.

Receiving and putaway: where scan discipline matters most

Receiving is where inventory truth begins. If receiving is rushed, if labels are inconsistent, or if putaway happens without scans, your inventory ledger becomes unreliable on day one. That unreliability shows up later as stockouts, mispicks, and emergency recounts.

Warehouse scan-based tracking treats receiving and putaway as first-class tracking steps, not administrative tasks. The dock is a location. Staging is a location. The pallet is tracked. When inventory moves from dock to staging to a rack, the system records each transition. That is what keeps inventory visible in the messy middle, where most systems go blind.

This is also where operational speed can coexist with accuracy. When scanning is built into the workflow, speed does not require shortcuts. It requires consistency.

Picking and packing: where scanning protects the customer experience

Pick errors are the mistakes customers remember. A wrong item shipped is a refund, a reship, and often a negative review. Warehouse scan-based tracking reduces pick errors by adding verification steps that catch mistakes before the box leaves the building.

In a strong workflow, the picker scans the location, scans the item, and the system validates the match. At pack, scanning confirms that the items in the carton match the order. Those checks are not bureaucracy. They are quality control.

Joel Malmquist, VP of Customer Experience at G10 Fulfillment, described the outcome of disciplined execution: "We have over 99.9% ship accuracy of these orders." Numbers like that are built on systems that enforce verification, especially when volume rises.

Omnichannel fulfillment demands warehouse-level truth

When you sell D2C and B2B from the same inventory pool, the warehouse becomes the source of truth for multiple channels at once. If that truth is wrong, every channel decision becomes risky. You can oversell online while trying to fill a retailer PO, or you can ship a retailer PO and disappoint your D2C customers. Either way, you lose.

Jen Myers, Chief Marketing Officer at G10 Fulfillment, described the practical challenge brands face during expansion: "You want to make sure your inventory is tracked across those two different systems, to make sure that there's enough inventory." That starts with warehouse scan-based tracking, because inventory accuracy inside the building is what keeps channel allocations honest.

Visibility reduces tickets and keeps the warehouse focused

Scan-based tracking supports accuracy, but it also supports something that is easy to overlook: fewer interruptions. When customers cannot see what is happening, they send emails, open tickets, and escalate. Those interruptions pull attention away from execution, which increases the odds of mistakes.

Maureen Milligan, Director of Operations and Projects at G10 Fulfillment, described the customer benefit of real-time access: "What these real-time portals provide our customers is 100% visibility." She also explained how that changes behavior: "They can actually watch those progressions going on." When customers can self-serve status and inventory information, the warehouse can stay focused on scanning, picking, and packing correctly.

How to tell if a warehouse actually runs scan-based tracking

Some providers will tell you they scan, but scanning can mean many things. A warehouse can scan at receiving and shipping and still lose inventory in the middle. The real question is whether scans happen at every touchpoint, including internal moves, replenishment, and returns.

A useful test is to ask for an audit trail. Can the warehouse show when inventory landed on the dock, when it moved, where it was stored, when it was picked, and when it shipped. Bryan described that level of traceability when he said, "We have portals that show you the data. We have history that shows you all of that tracking." That history is what lets you diagnose issues quickly instead of guessing.

How G10 approaches warehouse scan-based tracking

G10 focuses on scan discipline and transaction-level visibility so inventory stays visible while it moves. Connor set the baseline clearly: "Having a 3PL and WMS that is 100% scan-based is crucial." Bryan described the tracking standard behind that baseline: "A good WMS tracks inventory through the warehouse at every point that you touch it." Maureen connected those capabilities to customer confidence through visibility: "What these real-time portals provide our customers is 100% visibility."

If you are tired of inventory surprises and you want a warehouse operation that can prove what happened, warehouse scan-based tracking is the standard to insist on. When scanning is consistent and audit trails are real, accuracy stops being a hope and becomes a controllable outcome. That is when fulfillment stops feeling like chaos and starts feeling like a system you can scale.