A–C
3PL — Third-party logistics: a company that stores your stock and ships your orders. See what is a 3PL.
ASN — Advance shipping notice: a list of what is arriving, sent before the delivery so the warehouse can check it in.
B2B — Business to business: shipments to shops, distributors or marketplaces, usually by carton or pallet.
B2C — Business to consumer: single orders delivered to shoppers.
CBM — Cubic metre: length × width × height in metres. Storage is often billed per CBM. A 60 × 40 × 40 cm carton is about 0.1 CBM.
COD — Cash on delivery: the customer pays when the parcel arrives. See cash on delivery.
Cut-off — The time by which an order must be placed to be dispatched the same day. Ours falls between 14:00 and 16:00.
D–O
D2C / DTC — Direct to consumer: a brand selling through its own store rather than through retailers.
FBA — Fulfilment by Amazon: Amazon stores and ships a seller’s stock from its own warehouses. Sellers must prep and deliver stock to Amazon’s requirements.
FBN — Fulfilled by Noon: noon’s equivalent programme.
FEFO / FIFO — First-expired-first-out and first-in-first-out: rules for which units are picked first.
Inbound — Stock arriving at the warehouse.
Kitting — Assembling several items into one sellable set before or at packing.
Last mile — The final delivery from the warehouse to the customer’s door.
Makani number — Dubai’s ten-digit building location code, useful for accurate delivery.
OMS — Order management system: software where orders from all channels are collected and tracked.
P–W
Pick and pack — Collecting ordered items from storage and packing them for shipping.
Prep — Preparing stock for a marketplace: labelling, packaging and booking delivery to its requirements.
Put-away — Placing received stock into its storage location.
Reverse logistics — Everything to do with returns.
RTO — Return to origin: a parcel that could not be delivered, or was refused, and comes back to the sender.
SKU — Stock keeping unit: a unique code for each product variant. Each size and colour is its own SKU.
SLA — Service level agreement: the commitments a provider makes in writing.
SOP — Standard operating procedure: your written instructions for how orders are packed and handled.
WMS — Warehouse management system: software that tracks where each unit is stored.