A pick list is a document sent to your warehouse pickers to fulfill a customer order. A pick list communicates the items they will need to retrieve from inventory storage, including inventory SKU, quantities and locations. As soon as a pick list is generated, the order fulfillment process can begin.

A pick list allows warehouse management to keep the picking process organized by assigning orders to each picker so they always have the next set of orders queued up as soon as one is picked.

A pick list should look similar to what the cart looks like for your customer before checkout — a recap of the items they ordered. Any given pick list may contain a single item, or five of a certain SKU and three of another SKU. Pick lists should be clear and easy to understand. There are a couple ways to provide picking lists.

The are 2 types of pick lists:

1. Physical pick lists
The old school way of generating pick lists is printing them. Before integrated software, mobile technology, and Wifi were ubiquitous, warehouses would use physical pick lists and hand each pick list on a piece of paper to a picker.

2. Digital pick lists
Digital pick lists are used when mobile devices, tablets, or laptops are used on the warehouse floor. Order details are automatically assigned and sent to each picker, where they can follow instructions on their device for a more efficient process. A digital picking list can more easily include additional information such as product images, serving as an additional quality control check and validation that the picker is grabbing the correct item.