ContainerQ Glossary

Terms that come up constantly across this Help Center — whether you’re evaluating a license-plating product, reading the Learn section, or trying to make sense of a Business Central item-tracking screen. Each entry links to a full article where one exists.

License plate

A single scannable identity assigned to a container — a pallet, tote, or carton — that stands in for everything packed onto it, so a warehouse can move, count, or ship the whole thing without re-stating what’s underneath. See what is a license plate in warehousing?

SSCC (Serial Shipping Container Code)

GS1’s standard, 18-digit identifier for a single logistics unit — the number that makes a license plate globally unique, not just unique inside one warehouse. See SSCC & container barcodes explained.

GS1-128

The barcode symbology used to print an SSCC, and optionally chain it together with item, lot, quantity, and expiration data, all in a single scan. See SSCC & container barcodes explained.

GS1 Company Prefix

A block of digits GS1 licenses to one company specifically. It’s baked into every SSCC that company issues, which is what makes those numbers globally unique without a shared registry. See the setup reference.

Application Identifier (AI)

A short numeric prefix inside a GS1-128 barcode — like (00) or (17) — that tells a scanner what kind of data follows: an SSCC, a lot number, an expiration date, and so on. See SSCC & container barcodes explained.

Check digit

A single digit calculated from the rest of an SSCC using GS1’s own algorithm, so a scanner can detect a misread number before it’s acted on — the last line of defense against a barcode that scanned incorrectly.

GTIN

GS1’s identifier for an item itself, as opposed to the container it’s packed on — the barcode on a single product, distinct from the SSCC of the pallet it ships on.

Package tracking

Business Central’s own item-tracking method for tracking stock by a physical package identifier. Where an item uses it, Business Central’s posting engine — not any add-on app — is what enforces the link between a package and its contents. See does Business Central have license plates?

Lot tracking

Tracking stock by the batch, or lot, it was produced or received in — the standard way expiring or quality-controlled inventory is grouped in Business Central.

Serial tracking

Tracking stock unit by unit, each with its own unique serial number, rather than in a batch.

Item tracking

Business Central’s umbrella term for lot, serial, and package tracking — the mechanisms that let the system know exactly which specific units of an item are where. See does Business Central have license plates?

Item tracking code

The setup record on a Business Central item that decides which tracking dimensions — lot, serial, package — apply to it, and how strictly the posting engine enforces them. This is what determines whether a container built from that item ends up Package-bound or Positional-bound.

Nesting

Packing one container inside, or onto, another — a tote on a pallet, several pallets in a shipping container — so the outer container’s identity carries everything nested inside it. See nesting and multi-level containers explained.

Parent container / child container

In a nested relationship, the parent is the outer container and the child is the one packed inside or onto it. A child can itself be a parent to something nested further down. See nesting and multi-level containers explained.

Binding Mode

ContainerQ’s on-screen indicator of how strongly a container is tied to its recorded contents — whether that bond is enforced by Business Central itself, or is a claim ContainerQ makes and continuously re-checks. See binding modes explained.

Package bind

A Binding Mode used for package-tracked items, where Business Central’s own posting engine is what stops the container and its contents from coming apart — a platform-enforced guarantee, not just a claim. See binding modes explained.

Positional bind

A Binding Mode used where Business Central has no native mechanism to enforce the bond. ContainerQ keeps its own record instead, and continuously re-checks it against the ledger, showing the result on the container. See binding modes explained.

Drift

What happens when a container’s recorded contents stop matching what Business Central’s ledger actually says — usually because a transaction touched the stock without going through the container’s own record. See why license-plate records drift.

Ledger-confirmed

The status a container shows once its record has been re-checked against Business Central’s ledger and the two currently agree.

Quality hold

A restriction placed on a container that’s designed to stop posting activity against it until the hold is released. See quality holds.

Cascading hold

A quality hold placed on a container that’s designed to also cover everything nested inside it, not just the container itself. See quality holds.

Container type

A category — pallet, tote, carton, and so on — an organization can define with its own defaults, like typical size or capacity. See the setup reference.

Cycle count

A count of a specific, limited slice of inventory — a bin, a container — rather than a full physical inventory of the whole warehouse.

Put-away

Moving received stock from a receiving area to its storage location, typically a bin.

Picking

Removing stock from storage to fulfill an order, a transfer, or a production need.

Cross-docking

Moving stock from receiving straight to outbound shipping, with little or no time spent in storage in between.

Second read

A general engineering practice, not specific to any one product: re-checking a system of record after an action, instead of trusting a status flag alone, to confirm the action actually landed the way it was reported to.

Shadow inventory

A side record — in any warehouse system, not just this one — that gets trusted as if it were the real inventory truth without ever being checked against it. A known risk in this category, and the reason drift matters. See why license-plate records drift.

Bin

The smallest storage location Business Central tracks stock in — a shelf, a slot, a floor position.

Warehouse management system (WMS)

Software that manages and directs warehouse operations — receiving, put-away, picking, and shipping — typically across bins and locations. See how ContainerQ relates to a full WMS.

Mixed pallet

A single pallet carrying more than one item, more than one lot, or both — exactly the case a license plate is built to handle in one scan instead of several.

FEFO (first-expired-first-out)

An inventory rule that picks or ships whichever stock expires soonest first, regardless of when it arrived — common for anything with a shelf life.

Trading partner

Any external business — a customer, a carrier, a 3PL — whose own systems need to read and trust a barcode your warehouse printed, without ever seeing your internal records. The reason a standards-based identifier like an SSCC matters more than a proprietary internal number.

Standards-based identifier

An identifier whose format and uniqueness rules are published and governed by a body outside any single company — GS1’s SSCC, for instance — as opposed to a proprietary numbering scheme only one vendor’s software understands. See SSCC & container barcodes explained.