Good Warehouse Practices Checklist: 9 Areas to Check

By Clarus Content Team · Published 12 november 2026

Good warehouse practices are the routines that keep stock accurate, people safe and orders moving on time, and someone checks them regularly. This good warehouse practices checklist breaks those routines into nine areas, from the yard to the despatch bay, with a handful of checks in each and one line on how a warehouse management system (WMS) can help.

The health and safety items follow the HSE’s guidance on warehousing and storage, and the fire responsibilities come from GOV.UK’s guidance on who is responsible for fire safety at work. For the detailed rules on warehouse hazards, the HSE’s Warehousing and storage: A guide to health and safety (HSG76) is the document to work from.

This checklist is a starting point, not a compliance document. Use it to test your own site, and read the full guidance for anything it touches. If you are new to running a site, how to manage a warehouse covers the wider operational picture.

What are good warehouse practices?

Good warehouse practices are the repeatable, checkable habits that make stock, people and orders behave the way your records say they should. Each practice has an owner, takes a few minutes to check, and works the same on a quiet Tuesday as it does on peak day.

In one sentence: good warehouse practices are the documented routines that keep stock accurate, people safe and orders on time, and that someone checks on a set schedule.

Most sites already do many of these things. The gap is usually consistency. A checklist turns a good supervisor’s habits into something the whole shift can follow, and something a manager can audit without relying on memory.

Start with the symptom

Most warehouse problems show up first as something you can see on the floor or in the numbers. The table below points you to the practice most likely to be missing, so you can jump straight to that area.

Health and safety

Warehouses carry the same core risks wherever they sit: moving vehicles, manual handling, falls from height, and racking that fails slowly before it fails suddenly. The checks below cover the basics that every site should be able to answer yes to.

• Keep a written risk assessment for the site, and review it when the layout, equipment or product mix changes. The HSE’s leaflet on managing risks and risk assessment at work sets out the method.
• Name a responsible person for fire safety, and check that the fire risk assessment is still current. Keep exits, gangways and fire points clear of pallets at all times.
• Inspect racking on a fixed schedule. Take damaged bays out of use, and never leave a broken pallet in the rack. Mathew Buttar, Head of Solutions at Clarus, puts it bluntly: a damaged pallet needs restacking before it goes any further.
• Train and assess everyone who drives a forklift or pallet truck, and keep the equipment maintained, as the Provision and Use of Work Equipment Regulations 1998 require.
• Assess manual handling tasks, and use lifting aids where a load is heavy or awkward. The Manual Handling Operations Regulations 1992 set the duties.
• Keep COSHH assessments and safety data sheets for any chemicals, where the people who need them can reach them quickly. The COSHH Regulations 2002 cover the duties.
• Separate vehicles from pedestrians with marked routes, and set a clear rule on who may enter the yard and the dock.

How a WMS helps: A WMS does not manage your safety compliance, and Mathew Buttar says the system does not offer a huge amount of health and safety functionality. Where it does help is the record: Clarus keeps a full audit trail of every action and stock movement, so you can see who handled a pallet and when.

Receiving and goods in

Receiving decides what your warehouse thinks it is holding, so mistakes made at the dock travel with the stock for the rest of its life. Unannounced deliveries are common. Mathew Buttar says they “happen all the time”, which is why a clear rule for unexpected stock matters more than any single process.

Den GS1 UK barcode standards behind most supplier labels are worth understanding, because a label that is read correctly at the dock saves time at every later step.

• Book every inbound delivery into a dock diary, so trailers do not wait in the yard for space or labour.
• Check each load against the advance shipping notice or purchase order before anyone signs it in.
• Record damage and shortages at the dock, while the evidence is still fresh, rather than after putaway.
• Agree an overflow plan before accepting stock that has nowhere to go.
• Check batch, expiry and best-before details at receipt, not when the stock is picked.
• Put unexpected or unverified stock on hold until someone has checked it.

How a WMS helps: Clarus’s goods-in flows can read the barcodes already on a standard label, so batch, quantity and pallet ID are captured with a scan, and a planlegging av dokking diary keeps deliveries in order.

Putaway and storage

Putaway decides how long it takes to find stock later. A location code that means something to the people walking the aisles saves more time than most software features do.

• Give every location a unique, readable code, and make sure the system record matches the label on the rack.
• Put stock away to a rule, such as the nearest free location of the right type, rather than to whichever space looks empty.
• Keep product groups, batches and quarantined stock separate, both physically and in the system.
• Check that pallets are within their rated weight and sit square before they go up the racking.
• Replenish pick faces before they run dry, and check each shift which faces need a top-up.
• Re-check labels and location codes after any racking move, bay change or rack repair.
• Review the layout when the product mix or order profile changes.

How a WMS helps: Suggested putaway applies your rules at receipt, and påfylling runs as its own function, driven by order demand and the pick faces you set. Clarus’s warehouse map is a visual guide to where stock should be, not an exact copy of your floor, so keep the physical checks in place.

Varebeholdningsnøyaktighet

Stock accuracy is the number everything else depends on, from picking to billing. JODA Frakt reached 99% stock accuracy by year two, and its stock takes moved from weeks of work in Excel to a single day. That result came from regular checks and a clear method, not a one-off count.

Mathew Buttar describes counting a sample of pallets each week, measuring the error rate on that sample, and applying the rate to the rest of the stock. His example is 500 pallets a week. He sums up the approach by saying cycle counting “is kind of where you want to be”.

• Count a sample of locations every week, rather than relying on a single year-end count.
• Count high-value and fast-moving lines more often than slow ones.
• Log a reason code for every variance, such as damage, mispick or receiving error.
• Investigate repeated variances at the root, and fix the process before you fix the count.
• Freeze only the locations being counted, so the rest of the warehouse keeps moving.
• Record one accuracy figure each week, worked out the same way every time.

For the measures to track against all of this, the warehouse KPI guide is the place to start, so this checklist does not repeat them.

How a WMS helps: Clarus supports structured stock checks, so counts are planned, recorded and reconciled against the system rather than kept on a separate sheet.

Plukking og pakking

Picking is where most errors reach a customer. The question to ask is whether the system stops a wrong pick, or whether someone notices it afterwards. Mathew Buttar notes that a paper pick list can take two people to check, one to pick and one to confirm, which is an expensive way to find an error.

• Pick against a scanned location and product, not against a printed list alone.
• Set a walk sequence for pick locations, so pickers do not double back through the same aisle.
• Stop the pick when a scan does not match the order line, and fix it at the shelf.
• Check each packed order against the order before it is labelled.
• Set FIFO, FEFO or LIFO rules per product, and make sure everyone knows which one applies to each line.
• Record damage found at packing with its batch number, so the cause can be traced.
• Compare picks per person and per shift against your targets, and review them with the team.

How a WMS helps: Skanningsbekreftelse stops the packer when the barcode does not match the order, so the error is caught at the shelf rather than by a customer. The plukking walk sequence is set on the location, and varelagerrotasjon rules can be set per client or per product. The pakkebord keeps the check at the point of packing.

Dispatch

Dispatch is the last chance to catch a mistake before it leaves the building. A load that is wrong at the door is much harder to fix once the driver has pulled away.

• Check the load against the manifest at the door, before the driver signs.
• Confirm the carrier, service level and label match before each parcel leaves the packing area.
• Plan despatch waves back from each carrier collection, so orders finish in time.
• Keep proof of despatch against each order, including the tracking reference.
• Keep returns in a separate area, and do not put them back into saleable stock without a check.
• Close the despatch log at the end of each day, with any exceptions noted.

How a WMS helps: Pack and dispatch strategies are set up in the system, and Clarus connects to over 70 shipping providers through its integrasjoner. Clarus does not have a returns module, so returns checks stay a manual process. Plan for that rather than assuming the system handles it.

Housekeeping

Housekeeping is the cheapest control in the warehouse, and the first one to slip in a busy week. It also matters for food and drink sites, where operators working to the BRCGS-standarder are expected to keep clean, controlled storage areas.

• Clear the dock, staging and goods-in areas at the end of each shift.
• Remove damaged stock and broken pallets from picking routes straight away.
• Keep aisle lines, floor markings and fire routes visible.
• Keep handheld scanners charged, numbered and returned to a set place at the end of each shift.
• Clear spillages at once, and mark the area until it is dry.
• Walk the site once a week with a written checklist, and log every action it raises.

How a WMS helps: A hold status in the system stops damaged or unverified stock from being picked until someone has resolved it. A WMS cannot clean a floor, but it can keep a broken item out of an order.

People and training

A warehouse runs on the people who know the process, not on the procedure document nobody reads. Mathew Buttar says Clarus aims to go live within 12 weeks on a standard project, because people need that time to learn a new way of working. Industry bodies such as the UK Warehouse Association are a useful place to compare notes with other operators on training.

• Train everyone on the scanning workflow before they touch live stock.
• Name a super user on each shift who can answer floor questions on the spot.
• Keep a written procedure for each role, and update it when the process changes.
• Sign people off on competence, not attendance, before they work a task alone.
• Cover absence with trained staff, and plan peak labour early, including the agency mix.
• Keep a record of who is trained on which task.

How a WMS helps: Clarus implementations are built around super users and phased go-lives, and håndholdte arbeidsflyter let you set the scan steps each task follows, so every operator works through the same sequence.

Data and systems

Your system is only as good as the data in it. Most billing disputes and stock arguments trace back to records that were entered twice, entered late, or never entered at all.

• Keep one system of record for stock. Do not run a shadow spreadsheet beside it.
• Clean master data, including product codes, units of measure, pack sizes and locations.
• Log a reason for every stock adjustment, and have a second person approve large ones.
• Review user access every quarter, and remove leavers the same day they go.
• Use the same definitions in every report, so this month’s figures can be compared with last month’s.
• Retest integrations after any change to an order source, carrier or accounts system.
• Check the audit trail when a figure looks wrong, before you change the figure.

How a WMS helps: Clarus is cloud-based and ISO 27001 certified, and it keeps a full audit trail of every action. Interspan cut its reporting time by 90% after replacing a legacy on-premise system, and Campeys fra Selby pulls product recalls in under five minutes.

Snakk med en lageransvarlig

Hvis du vurderer ulike alternativer og ønsker å se hvordan et spesialutviklet lagerstyringssystem (WMS) fungerer i praksis, er Clarus verdt å ta en prat med. Vi samarbeider med 3PL-leverandører og distributører over hele Storbritannia for å implementere lagerstyringsprogramvare som tilpasses din driftsmodell – ikke omvendt.

Ta kontakt med teamet vårt å snakke gjennom dine krav.