Short answers for 3PL teams
Short definitions and quick how-tos for the terms and tasks that come up when a 3PL runs on a warehouse management system.
What Cargohold does for 3PLs, who it suits, and when you should buy subscription software instead. This is not a ranking.
Cargohold is the system Microsive builds, and this site is openly its publication, so here is what it can show. These are screens from the Microsive demo platform, all with demo data: the building, the yard with trailers at the doors, a rack aisle, and a planner for loading a trailer.
Mix-ups
Four terms that get used for the same building. Who owns the stock, who decides, and how each one is usually paid, with a small table to keep next to your sales notes.
How-tos
A lot groups many units, a serial number names one. Which to track for a client, what it adds at the dock and the pack bench, and what to ask before you agree to it.
Guides
A 3PL has many clients on one floor, and that changes what you need from warehouse management software. A twelve point checklist to take to every demo.
Buying
Generic warehouse software assumes one owner. A 3PL has many. Where that gap costs money, and nine questions to ask any 3PL WMS vendor before you sign.
Roles
What a 3PL manager does: answering for other companies' goods inside your building. A typical day, who they deal with, and the jobs that are not theirs.
Glossary
3PL WMS terms defined in a sentence or two, from on hand stock to rate cards, with the pairs people mix up at the end.
Glossary
ASN stands for advance ship notice. What it tells the dock before the truck arrives, what to put on it, what breaks without it, and a checklist for clients.
How-tos
Forty cartons expected, thirty eight counted. How to handle a receiving discrepancy at the dock, what to record, and what to tell the client the same day.
