Learn to enhance warehouse efficiency with audits and a free checklist. Discover tips for improving operations, inventory control, and last-mile delivery.
A warehouse audit is like a safety net.
It's there to keep your business safe. Here, "you" means your profits. And "the ground" is expensive mistakes and wasted money.
Audits might seem like extra work. But they’re a must-have that costs a bit of time and money now but saves a lot of both later.
Keep reading to find out how to protect your profits with warehouse audits. You'll also get a useful checklist for creating your audits. Plus, we’ll share the one step many warehouses forget—the move to last-mile delivery.
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A warehouse audit is a check-up done by managers and leaders to see how well everything is working. These audits are like a safety net for your profits, making sure safety rules are followed, inventory is counted acurrately, and operations run smoothly.
Warehouse audits are key to making your operations run better, so they should be a regular part of your routine. Do them often instead of all at once. Auditing your warehouse doesn’t have to mess up your supply chain or delay deliveries. Break them into smaller, manageable parts instead of trying to do a big audit once or twice a year.
Check your inventory every few months or even monthly. Instead of checking every pallet at once, spot-check high-traffic areas most often to maintain quality control. Count inventory and compare it with records regularly to catch problems early before they become big issues.
Use audit reports to spot areas for improvement and make changes that matter, like better inventory control. A bad rating isn’t a failure; it's a chance to boost efficiency, productivity, customer happiness, and revenue. Yet, if safety rules aren’t followed or you find theft, you must take serious steps. Usually, though, audits should be a positive experience.
For example, if an employee performance audit shows new hires are struggling, you dig deeper and find that those who struggle in the first three months often leave within a year.
To cut down on employee turnover costs, you change your onboarding process. Maybe you pair new employees with a successful “onboarding buddy” to mentor them in their first few weeks and track performance metrics to see if they improve. This is one way audit info can help protect your revenue.
Warehouse teams often ignore on-time delivery, thinking it's the courier's job. But even if you don't have your own delivery team, you affect delivery times. Use this to protect and boost your revenue.
A survey found that 17% of shoppers switch retailers if their order is late just once. Show up late two or three times, and that number jumps to 55%. Good warehousing helps last-mile delivery teams succeed, so audit the handoff from packing to delivery.
Ensure your warehouse team communicates well with delivery drivers (and vice versa). Drivers shouldn’t wait around for packers to finish, and products shouldn’t sit on the dock waiting for a truck, especially if they can spoil.
Check your delivery history and last-mile data. See if timely departures from your warehouse lead to timely deliveries.
The easiest way to smoothly connect your warehouse team with last mile delivery teams is by using eLogii route optimization software and warehouse management features.
Warehouse Operations allows warehouse workers to manage their tasks using the eLogii Dashboard. You can create multiple workflows to suit different scenarios. That is especially useful if you have several warehouses with unique operations.
Each warehouse operator is set up as a new user with specific permissions and an interface tailored to their role, preventing any overlap with route planners.
To set up Warehouse Operations, start by defining your users (warehouse operators) and then proceed to create workflows tailored to your needs.
With eLogii, warehouse dispatchers know exactly where delivery trucks are and if they’re running late. This lets them schedule picking and packing to match when each vehicle arrives. The “Return to Depot” feature helps dispatchers easily create driver shifts with many loads. It ensures each vehicle is fully loaded according to its unique capacity.
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Start with this checklist for your audit and tweak it to fit your warehouse layout. This isn’t a complete checklist but a starting point for making your own audit checklist.
Receiving/Product Intake
Put-Away
Picking
Packing
Transfer to Last Mile Delivery/Vehicle Loading
Restocking/Reverse Logistics (if applicable)
Operations audits can be time-consuming because you need to watch each operation closely. This means checking analytics and documents, observing how things work, and talking to the workers who handle each task. Ask them if they’ve noticed any issues, delays, or ways to improve processes.
The questions in these checklists are meant to help you catch small problems before they become big ones. You can create your own internal audits for any part of your business—like accounting, bookkeeping, or even marketing.
Depending on your warehouse’s size and needs, key stakeholders might need financial audit reports. It’s also smart to share the audit results with your team. Celebrate where they’re doing well and guide them on how to improve in areas where they need it.
Audits are just one part of effective warehouse management.
Interested in learning more? Explore our warehouse management guide.
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If you opt for our Office / Warehouse / Distribution Center plan and combine it with Routing and planning you can expect streamlined operations, improved efficiency, and better coordination across all aspects of your logistics and distribution processes.
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