Wholesale Handler
A packing slip is the simplest document in your business. It's a list: customer name, what they ordered, how many of each. That's it.
And yet this is where deliveries go wrong. The wrong number of sourdoughs in the wrong crate. A missing item that was on the order but not on the slip. Two customers' orders mixed up because someone misread a handwritten note at 5am in poor light.
The packing slip isn't complicated. But getting it wrong is expensive - in wasted product, return trips, and customers who lose trust.
What a packing slip actually needs
For a wholesale bakery, it's short:
- Customer name and delivery address
- Each product and its quantity
- Delivery date
- Any special notes (e.g. "leave at side door", "call on arrival")
That's the whole document. It doesn't need branding, terms and conditions, or a logo. It needs to be readable by someone loading a van at 5am.
How most bakeries do it now
Handwritten lists
You look at the orders, write out what goes where, and stick the note in the crate. Fast to create but easy to get wrong - especially when you're writing ten of them before dawn.
Handwriting gets messy when you're rushing, quantities get transposed, and if someone else is loading the van, they're interpreting your shorthand.
Printed spreadsheets
A step up. You type the orders into a spreadsheet, print it, and use that as your packing list. More legible, but you're still manually entering every order into the spreadsheet.
If an order changed after you printed, the slip is wrong. And you're spending time on data entry that doesn't need to exist.
Memory
Some bakeries don't use packing slips at all. The baker loads the van and just knows that the café gets six sourdoughs and the deli gets twelve baguettes.
This works until it doesn't. A sick day, a new hire, a busy morning where you're distracted. The knowledge is in your head, which means it leaves with you.
Where packing errors actually happen
It's rarely a dramatic mistake. It's small things that add up:
- Quantity errors
The order said 15, the slip says 12, the crate has 12. Customer calls mid-morning asking where the other three are
- Mixed-up orders
Two customers ordered similar items. Their crates get swapped. Both are wrong
- Stale information
An order was updated before cutoff but after you wrote the slip. You packed the old version
- Missing items
A product was on the order but somehow didn't make it onto the packing list. It sits in the bakery while the van drives away
Every one of these errors costs you. A return trip to deliver missing items. A credit note for the wrong quantity.
Worst of all: a customer who starts double-checking every delivery because they don't trust the count.
The fix is boring
Packing slips shouldn't be created. They should be generated.
If your orders are already in a system, the packing slip is just a different view of the same data. Customer A ordered six sourdoughs and four rye. That's the packing slip.
No retyping, no handwriting, no room for transcription errors.
The slip is always up to date because it's pulling from the confirmed order. If the customer changed their order before cutoff, the slip reflects the final version. If the order is locked, the slip matches exactly what was ordered.
Print it, put it in the crate, load the van.
How Wholesale Handler solves this
Wholesale Handler generates packing slips directly from confirmed orders. Each delivery date has a clear list of what each customer ordered. Print them, pack to them, deliver.
No spreadsheet. No handwriting. No gap between what was ordered and what's on the slip. The packing slip is the order.
