Warehouse management processes — from GRN to dispatch

GRN — Goods Receipt Note — is the formal record that goods have arrived and been checked against a purchase order. It is the starting point of every warehouse cycle. Everything that enters the warehouse without a proper GRN is invisible to the system — no bin location, no lot number, no Tally entry.

In a manual process, the store man checks the delivery against a paper PO, writes a handwritten receipt, and passes it to the office to enter into Tally — sometimes the same day, sometimes the next morning. By that time, the goods may already have been moved, the quantity may have been miscounted, and the lot numbers may not have been noted.

Put-away is the process of moving goods from the receiving dock to their designated storage location. It sounds simple — but in most warehouses it is the root cause of two of the most expensive problems: stock that cannot be found, and FIFO violations.

Without directed put-away, the store man places goods wherever is convenient — near the dock, in a free space, wherever looks empty. Three weeks later, nobody remembers where those goods went. Staff search the warehouse. FIFO breaks because the older stock of the same item is in a different location that nobody found first.

In a manufacturing store-room with hundreds of bins, directed put-away is the difference between a store man who spends 2 minutes locating and placing a delivery, and one who spends 20 minutes deciding where to put it and creating a problem that lasts weeks.

Once goods are in their bin, the storage phase begins. Storage is not passive — it requires continuous tracking of what is in each location, what lot it belongs to, when it expires, and how much remains. This is where bin-level inventory tracking becomes essential.

Tally's godown tracking gives you a total per godown — 240 GI Pipes in "Warehouse 1". A WMS gives you exactly 60 GI Pipes in Bay C, Shelf 04, Bin B2 and 180 GI Pipes in Bay D, Shelf 01, Bin A1. The difference matters when you need to pick 50 for an order and you need to pick the oldest batch first.

What a WMS tracks in storage

• Bin location (Bay, Shelf, Bin number — or any naming convention you use)
• Item code and description
• Quantity available, quantity reserved for open orders
• Lot number, batch number, and serial number where applicable
• Date of receipt and expiry date for FEFO-managed items
• Movement history — every GRN, transfer, and pick recorded

Picking is where the physical warehouse meets the customer order. It is also where the most errors happen — wrong item, wrong quantity, wrong batch, wrong location — and where the most time is wasted if staff are not directed efficiently.

A WMS generates a pick list for each order or wave of orders. The pick list tells the picker exactly which bin to go to, which lot to take, and how many to pick. The picker confirms each item by barcode scan. If the wrong item is scanned, the scan is rejected before the goods can be loaded.

FIFO vs FEFO — which does your warehouse need?

FIFO (First In First Out) dispatches the oldest stock first — the batch received earliest leaves first. This is appropriate for most goods. FEFO (First Expired First Out) dispatches the stock with the earliest expiry date first, regardless of when it arrived. This is essential for cold storage, pharma, food, and any goods with an expiry date.

In Fast WMS, the picking rule is set per item or per category. Once set, it cannot be overridden at the warehouse floor — the pick list only shows the correct batch, and scanning any other batch is rejected.

Read the full comparison: FIFO vs FEFO picking — which method does your warehouse actually need?

Dispatch is the final physical step — goods leave the warehouse. In India, dispatch involves three mandatory documents for most consignments: a delivery challan (required for all goods in transit), a GST tax invoice (for taxable supplies), and an e-way bill (for consignments above ₹50,000 in value, as required under GST).

Without a WMS, dispatch is typically the most time-consuming step — manual challan writing, manual invoice generation in Tally, e-way bill created separately on the NIC portal, and a Tally sales voucher entered by the accounts team. Each of these steps can take 20–30 minutes per dispatch and introduces data entry risk at every stage.

Reporting is not a step in the physical warehouse cycle — it runs continuously alongside all five processes. A WMS generates reports automatically from live transaction data. Reports reflect the current state of the warehouse at any moment — not a snapshot from the last manual stock count.

The 6 reports every warehouse manager needs

All six reports are generated from the same transaction data that flows through GRN, put-away, picking, and dispatch. There is no separate data entry for reporting — the reports are a by-product of the warehouse running correctly.