Wholesale Pick Accuracy That Protects Your Margins

Wholesale pick accuracy is one of the quiet make-or-break parts of B2B fulfillment. It does not get the spotlight that routing guides or ASNs do, but it determines whether your orders arrive correctly, whether retailers trust you, and whether chargebacks stay away from your balance sheet. Many operators search for terms like why are my wholesale orders always wrong or how do I improve pick accuracy, which usually means a retailer has already raised a red flag.

If you have ever had a retailer reject a shipment because the wrong item was tucked into the middle of a pallet, you know the sting all too well.

Why wholesale accuracy matters more than D2C accuracy

Wholesale is unforgiving because the stakes are higher. A single mispick in D2C adds inconvenience. A single mispick in wholesale can jeopardize a retail relationship you spent months building. Instead of disappointing one shopper, you disappoint an entire receiving team and create ripples through a retailer's system.

Joel Malmquist, VP of Customer Experience at G10, articulated this reality clearly. "We have over 99.9 percent ship accuracy on these B2B orders, which when you look at it on a unit level is almost unbelievable. It is really hard to do." That level of precision is not luck. It is engineering.

Where wholesale picking breaks down

Most mispicks begin with a simple problem: poor inventory data. If the system thinks a product is in a bin when it is not, the picker improvises. Improvisation creates inconsistency. Retailers detect inconsistency. And that leads to penalties or rejected shipments.

Connor Perkins, Director of Fulfillment, sees this frequently when new customers arrive from other 3PLs. "One of the pain points our clients have experienced with previous 3PLs is inventory accuracy. Maybe their previous 3PL was not great at picking the orders accurately. So they were losing money by shipping wrong items or wrong quantities of items." When the upstream system is wrong, the pick is wrong by default.

Why scanning is the backbone of accurate picking

Pick accuracy improves dramatically when scanning becomes mandatory. That means scanning each pick, each carton, each pallet, and each movement. Half-scanning or selective scanning is just manual labor with optional electronics.

Bryan Wright, CTO and COO, put this into perspective. "A bad WMS will not track inventory 100 percent. A good WMS tracks inventory through the warehouse at every point you touch it." Picking requires the same discipline. Every touch is an opportunity for accuracy or error, depending on the system.

The human bottleneck behind mispicks

Even with the right system, pick accuracy collapses when communication lags. Many 3PLs run their customer service through ticket queues. Pick issues arise. A ticket is submitted. Hours pass. Meanwhile the wholesale order sits unverified, and the retailer's timeline gets tighter.

Joel contrasted this with G10’s approach. "At some 3PLs you get thrown into a ticketed queue, and you get different people replying every time. It can take days, if not weeks, to get a resolution." Slow answers create fast mistakes in wholesale.

G10 assigns each customer a direct person who understands their products, their retailers, and their order patterns. "You call one person. That is it. And things get done," Joel said. That speed keeps mispicks from compounding into costly issues.

How picking rules change for wholesale

Wholesale picking has layers of complexity that D2C never encounters. Retailers require specific pack quantities, carton assortments, PO sequencing, and pallet layouts. Picking incorrectly is not just picking the wrong SKU. It can be picking the right SKU in the wrong quantity, carton count, or configuration.

Bryan explained why G10 handles this smoothly. "Our WMS was written around B2B from day one. If a retailer has a specific labeling rule or ASN rule or pick requirement, it is already built into the software." Picking accuracy is not maintained by memory. It is maintained by system logic.

What high-accuracy picking looks like in real life

High-accuracy wholesale picking has a predictable rhythm. The system tells the warehouse where each product lives. Every movement is scanned. Pickers follow structured workflows. The WMS validates each pick. The system catches errors before the pallet is built, long before a retailer has a chance to complain.

Connor described the onboarding process that enables this. "When we onboard a client who sells into places like Amazon or Walmart, the process changes depending on where they are selling. We work through all of their routing guide requirements and make sure the warehouse is ready before the first order ever drops." Picking is only as strong as the setup behind it.

How G10 responds when accuracy is under pressure

Wholesale pick accuracy is tested hardest during spikes. Late inbound shipments. Large retailer orders. Forecast surges. Viral D2C events that pull inventory in two directions at once. Those are the moments when mispicks happen easily unless the system is built to resist chaos.

Joel shared a story from a Target shipment delayed at the port. "Our supervisor, warehouse manager, and several employees worked the entire day into the night, then came back at 5 a.m. to make sure we had the routing completed." High-pressure situations reveal whether a 3PL truly controls its accuracy or merely hopes for it.

He recalled another surge moment. "The client asked, Can you help us? And we said, Yeah, we gotcha. Then we sent a truck to the carrier at midnight." Picking accuracy held steady even during the rush.

The bottom line for wholesale brands

Wholesale pick accuracy is not optional. It is the foundation of profitable, predictable B2B fulfillment. When your picks are right, your pallets flow correctly, your ASNs match, and your retailers stay happy. When picks are wrong, everything else unravels.

If you want wholesale pick accuracy that protects your margins and strengthens your retail relationships, reach out to G10. Your orders will move cleaner, smoother, and with far fewer surprises.