Guide

How to reduce mis-picks in your warehouse

What picking errors really cost, the usual causes, and the cheap fixes that bring them down.

Updated November 2026 · 6 min read

Picking errors are among the most expensive problems in a warehouse, because you pay for them twice: once to pick the wrong item, and again to put it right. They also cost you customers, and for a 3PL they can cost you clients. The good news is that most mis-picks have a handful of causes, and the fixes are usually cheap.

What a mis-pick really costs

Add up everything that happens after a wrong item leaves the building:

• Customer service time to handle the complaint.
• The cost of picking, packing and shipping the right item again.
• Return postage, and the labour to receive, check and put the wrong item back.
• Any refund, discount or goodwill gesture.
• For 3PLs: SLA penalties or credits, and the risk of losing the client.

Put a figure on each step for your own site. Most teams find a single error costs far more than they assumed, which makes the case for fixing it.

Measure it the right way

Track errors per 1,000 orders (or per 1,000 lines), not just a percentage, and record the cause of each one. "Wrong item", "wrong quantity", "missing item" and "damaged" are different problems with different fixes. Two weeks of honest cause data will tell you more than a year of totals.

The usual causes

• Look-alike products next to each other: sizes, colours or variants in neighbouring locations.
• Poor location labels: faded, missing, or hard to read at height.
• Stock in the wrong location: putaway errors that turn into pick errors later.
• Unit of measure confusion: picking a single when the order wanted a pack, or the reverse.
• Rushed or untrained pickers: especially agency staff at peak, starting without an induction.
• No feedback loop: errors are fixed by customer service but never traced back to the floor.

Fixes that cost little or nothing

Run a ten-minute daily error review

Every morning, look at yesterday's errors by cause and location with the team leaders. Fix the location, the label or the training issue that day. This one habit closes the feedback loop and usually brings the error rate down within weeks.

Separate the look-alikes

Never slot similar variants side by side. Put them in different bays or at different heights, so a picker has to look properly to get the wrong one.

Fix labels and add check digits

Clear, consistent location labels at the right height. If you use scanners, scan the location as well as the product. If you don't, a short check code on each location label that pickers read back works surprisingly well.

Check the high-risk items at packing

You don't need to check everything. A quick check at the pack bench for the products that cause most errors catches them before they ship.

Induct every starter

A short induction, a one-page standard work sheet and a buddy for the first shifts, for agency staff too. Track each new starter's errors in their first weeks.

Errors are often tied up with labour planning and slotting. See also our guide on cutting warehouse labour costs without automation.