Scan Verification

Scan Verification adds one step at the pack bench: before postage prints, the packer scans every item going into the parcel. Stk checks each scan against the order. If an item does not belong to the order, or a unit is missing, or one too many has been added, the label will not print.

This is a gate, not a reminder. That is deliberate — a check an operator is able to skip does not prevent anything. There is a supervisor override for the cases that genuinely need one, and every use of it is recorded on the order.

Scan at the pack bench, not at the shelf. If you only ever add one scanning step, this is the one that pays for itself.

Scanning while picking catches a mistake earlier, which is useful. But it does not catch the mistakes that happen after the pick, and in a small operation those are the majority:

• Two orders packed side by side and the items swapped between parcels;
• An item picked correctly, then left on the bench and never packed;
• The right parcel sealed with the wrong label on it;
• An extra unit added “to be safe” that nobody ordered.

The pack-bench scan is the last point at which every one of those is still catchable. It is the industry’s standard final electronic gate for exactly that reason.

Manual picking without scanning runs at roughly 1–3% error across the industry. Enforced scan verification takes that to well under 0.5%.

The gap is widest for businesses selling one style across many sizes in near-identical garments — swimwear, underwear, basics. A folded size 12 and a folded size 14 look the same to a person working quickly. They are never the same to a scanner. If your returns are dominated by “wrong size sent” rather than “didn’t fit”, this module is aimed directly at your problem.

1. Print the pick slip as usual. With this module on, pick slips carry a scannable order barcode in the top-right corner.
2. Pick from the shelves as usual. Nothing changes here; picking stays on paper.
3. At the bench, scan the pick slip barcode. The order opens straight into the scan panel.
4. Scan each item as it goes into the parcel. Lines tick green and the counter climbs. A good scan beeps high; a rejected scan beeps low, flashes red and names the problem.
5. Print the label. The button unlocks only when the counter is complete. From there, weighing, labelling and manifesting are unchanged.

For a single-item order — which for most retailers is the majority of orders — this adds one scan, about two seconds.

Message	What happened	What to do
WRONG ITEM	The garment scanned belongs to a different order.	Take it out of the parcel. Check whether another order on the bench is missing it.
OVER-SCAN	Every unit of that product is already in the parcel.	Put the extra unit back. It was not ordered.
Unknown barcode	The barcode is not on any product in your Stk catalogue.	Usually a damaged label or a product missing its barcode in Stk. Fix the product record, or use the override.

Two things are worth doing first, or the gate will frustrate the floor on day one:

1. Check your barcode coverage

Every product variant you ship needs a barcode recorded in Stk. Products without one cannot be scanned and will need an override every time. The Variants tab on the Products page has a No barcode filter that lists them.

2. Scan real stock against Stk

Barcodes imported from another system have usually never been tested against the physical garment. Before rollout, take about thirty items across different styles and sizes and scan them in Inventory → Adjustments to confirm each one resolves to the right variant. If an import mapped a size incorrectly, the gate would reject correct picks — and that erodes trust in it very quickly.

Administrators can release an order that cannot be scanned — a torn swing tag, a product with no barcode yet. A reason is required and is written to the order’s history alongside who did it.

The override is there on purpose. A gate with no legitimate escape hatch gets worked around instead, and then you have neither the control nor any record of the exceptions. Watch the override rate: if it is climbing, it is usually pointing at missing barcode data rather than at the operators.

• You ship a handful of highly distinct products. If nothing in your catalogue is confusable, visual checking is already reliable and the scan is pure overhead.
• Your barcode data is not ready. Fill the gaps first. Turning the gate on over incomplete data means overriding constantly, which teaches everyone to ignore it.
• You do not pack your own orders. If a third-party warehouse ships for you, the control needs to live in their system, not yours.

Scan Verification records that the parcel contents were checked. It does not move stock, change order status, or alter reservations — those remain driven by the normal order lifecycle. Turning it off later leaves all previous history intact.

Scanning while picking, on a phone or handheld, is a separate future capability under this same module. It complements the pack-bench gate rather than replacing it.

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