Getting Started
Your first ten minutes in CanopyWMS — signing in, the 3PL-and-clients model, the topbar switchers, roles, and how to find your way around.
Before you touch a module, get your bearings. This page explains the app shell you'll stare at all day: how you sign in, why a 3PL juggles many "clients," the two switchers at the top of every screen, and what your role lets you see. New to the vocabulary too? Keep the Glossary open alongside.
Signing in
You don't sign yourself up. An admin at your 3PL invites you by email; until you accept, your account shows as Pending. The invite links you to a sign-in page (often white-labeled with your 3PL's logo and colors) where you finish setting up. After that you sign in with your email — via a magic link or an enabled provider — and sign out from the avatar menu in the top-right.
Who set up my account?
If you can't sign in, it's an account issue, not a bug — ask whoever administers your WMS. Brands (your clients) don't use this operator app; they get a separate, brand-scoped Brand Portal where they can place their own orders, POs, and SKUs but can't run warehouse operations.
Your 3PL and its clients
Two words appear everywhere, so pin them down now:
- Tenant — your entire 3PL company account (the whole CanopyWMS instance your team logs into).
- Client (or brand) — one company you fulfill for.
A 3PL has many clients because it warehouses and ships for many brands at once. That's why nearly every record — a SKU, an order, a bin's stock, a return — belongs to a specific client. Keeping brands' inventory and orders separate is the whole job.
The client switcher
Top-right of the topbar (just left of your avatar/user menu) is the client switcher. It sets the scope of every screen you open.
- All clients (the default) shows every brand's data together — the tenant-wide view, with a Client column on most lists.
- Pinning a brand narrows everything to that one client. The sidebar, lists, dashboards, and reports all re-scope.
- Some create surfaces are per-client. A few (like Return Codes) hide their Add button and prompt "Select a client from the top bar" until you pin one; others (like Add SKU) stay available and ask you to choose the brand inside the form.
What 'pin a client' means
When the docs say pin a client, they mean choose that brand in this switcher. It's the fastest way to work inside one brand's world.
The warehouse switcher
Next to it, tenants with more than one warehouse get a warehouse switcher. It scopes lists (and the warehouse map, cycle-count queue, and pick sessions) to one building, with an All warehouses option. Starting a pick session requires a specific warehouse pinned here.
Roles — what you can see
What you can see and do depends on your role:
| Role | Who it's for | Can do |
|---|---|---|
| Tenant Admin | 3PL managers | Everything — including client settings, user management, and branding. |
| Tenant Operator | Warehouse floor staff | Run every operational module (receive, pick, pack, ship, returns). Can view the Clients list/detail (read-only). Can't manage branding, and the Users page is admin-only — an operator who opens it sees only "Admin access required to manage users." |
| Client User | A brand's own staff | Only their own brand's data, through the separate Brand Portal — not this operator app. |
| Canopy Support | Canopy staff | Cross-tenant support access. Assigned by Canopy, never by a 3PL admin. |
This guide is written for Tenant Admins and Operators. Where an action is admin-only (like managing users or branding), the relevant page says so.
Finding your way around
The left sidebar is your map. This guide walks the modules in the conceptual order work flows through the warehouse — Orders come in, you Receive stock, store it (Inventory, Warehouse, Warehouse Ops), Pick and Pack it, Ship it, and handle Returns — plus Dashboard, Customers, Automation, Reports, and admin (Clients, Users, Branding). The sidebar's own top-to-bottom order differs slightly from this narrative flow.
Modules with sub-pages expand when you click them; a collapse toggle at the bottom narrows the sidebar to icons. Items you don't have the role for simply don't appear. (You may also see a Billing entry — it isn't live in production yet, so it isn't covered in this guide.)