WarehouseQ & Business Central Warehousing Glossary

Plain-language definitions for warehousing and Business Central terms used throughout this Help Center. Where a term has a fuller article, the definition links to it.

Advanced warehousing

The upper end of Business Central’s warehouse complexity ladder: receiving and shipping are consolidated across multiple source documents, and pick/put-away work is generated from worksheets rather than created one document at a time. See warehouse topology, explained.

Assembly

Reporting a kit built from component items in one step — distinct from a full production order with its own routing. One of the operations WarehouseQ’s mobile surface covers; see operations covered.

Barcode symbology

The specific encoding rules a barcode follows — Code 128 and its GS1-128 dialect are the two that show up constantly on warehouse and shipping labels. See barcode symbologies for warehouse labels, explained.

Basic warehousing

A configuration level with a separate receive/put-away or ship/pick step, order-by-order or consolidated, without full directed control over which bin is used. See warehouse topology, explained.

Bin

The smallest storage unit Business Central tracks — as coarse as an entire warehouse or as fine as a single numbered shelf slot. Whether bins are required at all is a location-level setting. See warehouse topology, explained.

Bin content

The quantity of a specific item sitting in a specific bin, at a specific location.

Bin Mandatory

A location-level setting deciding whether a bin code is required on every transaction against that location, or merely optional information. Turns on automatically, and becomes non-negotiable, the moment directed put-away and pick is turned on. See warehouse topology, explained.

Bin ranking

A priority order assigned to bins so that put-aways fill higher-ranked bins first and picks drain them first — the mechanism that lets a fast-moving item be deliberately routed close to a pack station. See directed put-away and pick, explained.

Bin type

At locations using directed put-away and pick, a code that controls which activities a given bin allows — receiving, shipping, picking, put-away, or quality control, among others.

Break bulk

Splitting a larger unit of measure (a case or a pallet) down into a smaller one (a single unit) at the point where a pick actually needs it, rather than always storing and picking in the smallest unit.

Cycle count

A count of a subset of inventory — one bin, one item — done on a rolling basis rather than counting the entire warehouse at once.

Directed put-away and pick

The top rung of Business Central’s warehousing ladder, where the system, not the worker, decides which bin a put-away lands in or a pick draws from. See directed put-away and pick, explained.

Expiration date

The date a lot or serial number is no longer sellable, attached through item tracking and used to enforce FEFO. See FEFO vs. FIFO, explained.

FEFO

First expired, first out — ship whichever stock expires soonest, regardless of arrival order. See FEFO vs. FIFO, explained.

FIFO

First in, first out — ship whichever stock arrived first. See FEFO vs. FIFO, explained.

Inventory pick / put-away

The order-by-order versions of picking and put-away, used at the less consolidated rungs of the warehousing ladder — one document per source order, rather than work generated from a worksheet across several orders at once.

Item ledger entry

Business Central’s permanent record of a quantity of an item moving — the actual source of truth for inventory, and the record WarehouseQ reads back to confirm a scan actually posted.

Item tracking code

A setup record assigned to an item that turns on which kinds of tracking apply to it — serial, lot, package, and whether an expiration date is required — and the precondition FEFO enforcement depends on. See FEFO vs. FIFO, explained.

Item tracking lines

The dedicated page where lot, serial, and package numbers are actually recorded against a transaction — not the same thing as a same-named field that might separately exist on the line itself. See item tracking in Business Central, explained.

License plate

An identifier for a physical unit load — a pallet or tote — that lets a warehouse move and track everything on it as one object instead of line by line. One of the operations WarehouseQ’s mobile surface covers; see operations covered.

Location

A physical place where inventory is received, stored, and shipped — a warehouse, a plant, a showroom, even a service vehicle.

Lot number

An identifier grouping a batch of an item, typically sharing a production run or an expiration date.

Movement

Relocating stock from one bin to another within the same location, without it leaving that location.

Offline queue (WarehouseQ)

The durable, on-device store that holds scans captured while a device has no connection, each entry tagged with an identifier Business Central uses to recognize a scan it has already accepted. See offline & connectivity.

Output / consumption

Reporting the finished goods produced by a production order (output) and the components used to produce them (consumption) — two of the operations WarehouseQ’s mobile surface covers.

Package number

An identifier for a physical package — a carton or a pallet — that can span multiple lots or serial numbers.

Physical inventory

A full count of stock on hand, reconciled against the system’s recorded quantities — as distinct from a cycle count, which covers only a subset.

Pick

Pulling stock from storage to fulfill an outbound order.

Pick worksheet

At the advanced-warehousing rungs, the tool that turns a pool of open outbound demand into generated warehouse pick documents, rather than requiring one pick to be created by hand per order.

Posting

Writing the fixed pair of entries — a quantity change and a value change — that together record a real inventory transaction, as distinct from a document merely showing a “posted” status on screen. See what “posting” actually means in Business Central inventory.

Put-away

Moving received stock from a receiving area into its storage bin.

Put-away template

A set of prioritized rules Business Central applies when suggesting which bin a put-away should land in — for example, preferring a bin that already holds the same item before routing to an empty one. See directed put-away and pick, explained.

Replenishment

Moving stock from bulk storage into active pick locations, so a picking bin doesn’t run dry mid-shift. One of the operations WarehouseQ’s mobile surface covers; see operations covered.

Reservation

Business Central’s mechanism for tying a specific quantity — sometimes a specific lot or serial number — to a specific order, so it can’t be double-promised to two customers at once.

Serial number

A unique identifier for one individual unit of an item, as distinct from a lot number, which groups a batch.

Strict Expiration Posting

An item tracking code setting that excludes already-expired lots or serials from a pick entirely, rather than merely sorting them last behind unexpired stock. See FEFO vs. FIFO, explained.

Transfer order

A document moving stock from one location to another, shipped from the source location and received at the destination — including, where the item requires it, lines carrying lot, serial, or package tracking.

Unit of measure

An item’s base unit — how it’s actually stored and valued in inventory — plus any alternate units (a case, a pallet) that convert to it for a specific transaction. See units of measure in warehouse operations, explained.

Warehouse activity

An umbrella term for the pick, put-away, and movement documents that direct physical work at the advanced-warehousing rungs of Business Central’s complexity ladder.

Warehouse class

A code assigned to items, bins, and zones to keep items with special storage needs — frozen, hazardous, or otherwise — in the bins actually built for them.

Warehouse Entry

Business Central’s record of a quantity moving through a specific bin at an advanced-warehousing location — a bin-level companion to the item ledger entry, which is the item-level source of truth for inventory overall.

Warehouse operator (WarehouseQ)

The permission level assigned to floor staff who scan and post through WarehouseQ’s mobile surface. See licensing & permissions.

Warehouse receipt

A document that consolidates receiving across one or more purchase or transfer orders before put-away — the advanced-warehousing alternative to handling each order’s receipt individually.

Warehouse shipment

A document that consolidates shipping across one or more sales or transfer orders before posting — the advanced-warehousing counterpart to a warehouse receipt.

Zone

A group of bins — a receiving zone or a stocking zone, for example — used to manage workflow and apply shared rules at the advanced-warehousing rungs. See directed put-away and pick, explained.