Glossary

Every acronym, status, and piece of warehouse jargon in CanopyWMS, defined in plain English — the page to keep open on your first week.

New to 3PL fulfillment or to CanopyWMS? Start here. Every term the rest of the guide uses is defined below, grouped by where you'll meet it. When another page uses one of these words, it links back here.

Core acronyms

Term	What it means
3PL (third-party logistics)	A company that runs warehousing and fulfillment on behalf of the brands it serves. This guide is written for a 3PL's admins and warehouse staff.
BOM (bill of materials)	The recipe for a kit — the list of component SKUs and quantities that make it up.
COGS (cost of goods)	The per-unit acquisition cost of a SKU, entered on the SKU detail's Details tab. The Sales by SKU report shows it as the COGS column and multiplies it by Available for Current value.
DTC (direct-to-consumer)	Orders shipped straight to individual shoppers, as opposed to bulk wholesale orders to a business.
PO (purchase order)	An inbound order telling the warehouse what stock is arriving from a vendor, so you can receive it. See Receiving.
RMA (return merchandise authorization)	A tracked return request. It moves Pending → In Transit → Received → Inspecting → Completed as goods come back and are dispositioned, or is Voided (stored as `CANCELLED` — the Customers sheet still shows that raw value) when it shouldn't exist. See Returns.
SKU (stock keeping unit)	The unique code for one sellable product. Every unit of stock, order line, pick, and inventory adjustment is tracked against a SKU.
SLA (service level agreement)	The promised ship-by turnaround, set per client as a target number of business hours (measured created → packed). An order breaches SLA if it ships slower than the target. Distinct from a per-order required ship date, which drives the "past SLA" flag.

Inventory quantities

Term	What it means
On-hand	Physical units sitting in bins right now.
Allocated	On-hand units reserved to open orders. Allocating an order converts available into allocated without physically moving anything.
Available	On-hand minus allocated — the sellable stock still free to promise.
At Risk	A SKU below its reorder point, or with under 14 days of cover. It's a SKU-list filter toggle (there's no "At Risk" badge) — at-risk rows are flagged by their days-of-stock pill color and a Reorder badge.
Days of cover (a.k.a. days of stock)	How many days current sellable stock lasts at recent sales velocity (on-hand ÷ average units shipped/day over the last 30 days). A dash means there's stock but no recent sales to project from. The dashboard calls it "days of cover"; the SKU list calls the same pill "days of stock".
Reorder point	A per-SKU on-hand threshold. When on-hand drops to or below it, the SKU gets a Reorder badge — independent of the days-of-cover runway.

Stock state

Term	What it means
Sellable	Stock in this bin counts toward what the sales channels can sell.
Pickable	Pickers can route to this bin. A non-sellable bin is also non-pickable.
Pick face (vs reserve)	A pick face (forward pick) is the easy-reach, pickable bin a picker pulls from — a PICKING-zone bin. Reserve is bulk/overstock storage. Replenishment tops up the pick face from reserve when it runs low.
Lot / lot-tracked	A lot is a tracked batch of a SKU carrying its own number and expiry. A lot-tracked SKU must have a lot chosen when it's received, picked, or restocked; one bin can't hold two lots of the same SKU.
Short-dated	Stock on a lot that hasn't expired but sits inside its SKU's minimum-shelf-life window (or on a held lot). Still on-hand, but held out of sellable stock so it isn't shipped too close to expiry.
Quarantine bin / Rejected	Damaged or suspect units are marked Rejected during receiving and routed to a quarantine bin — a non-sellable, non-pickable location kept separate from good stock. Quarantine-zone bins can never be pickable or sellable.
Non-physical SKU	A SKU that carries no stock and isn't picked or counted (a digital good, service, or virtual charge line). It can appear on orders but skips the warehouse floor.
Stock pool	A bin's stock split by lot number, expiry, or pack form. A bin with more than one pool forces the operator to pick which pool to move, because a barcode alone can't say which physical lot or form is in hand.
Storage tag	A tenant-defined placement word (REFRIGERATED, ALCOHOL, HEAVY, …) attached to SKUs as a requirement and to bins or zones as a capability. A SKU can only be placed in a bin whose capabilities cover everything it requires; a tag marked exclusive keeps everything else out of that bin (ambient stock stays out of the cooler). Managed under Inventory → Storage Tags.

Picking

Term	What it means
Pick list / batch	A set of orders grouped to be picked together in one trip.
Pick strategy (batch grouping)	How a batch is built: Single = one order per list; Batch (Priority) = several orders picked together by priority; Seed (Optimized) = groups orders by walkway proximity to minimize walking. Chosen in Pick Lists → Create Batch. Distinct from a SKU's lot-rotation strategy (FEFO/FIFO, below).
Tote	A barcoded container that carries one order's picked units from the shelf to packing. Each tote is Available, In Use, or Flagged; the barcode links the pack session to the order. A wholesale order sent to picking may span several cart totes on one trip (below).
Staging location (wholesale)	A bin of type STAGING, non-sellable and non-pickable, where a non-EDI wholesale order's picked units are put down before they are boxed. One order at a time per location, and it has to be empty before another order can take it; an order cannot be allocated or picked without one. Chosen with Set staging location on the order page; the whole floor's list is View Staging Locations on Orders → Wholesale. See A wholesale order.
Sent to picking (wholesale)	A non-EDI wholesale order an operator has handed to the floor with Send to Picking: it is listed under Active Pick → Wholesale in its warehouse, and desk picking and plan changes are refused until the pick is done or the order is recalled. Recall takes it back only while no picker has started a cart and nothing is picked. The status ladder is untouched.
Cart tote / trip (wholesale)	On a wholesale order sent to picking, the picker scans one or more totes onto a cart and the order's pick plan becomes that cart's pick list; counted units go into any scanned tote, and each placement is recorded. One trip is one cart's walk: the picker can Drop off cart at the staging location with part of the order and start another trip for the rest, or Save and exit and resume the same cart later. The list completes with Dropped at <location> · Complete pick list.
Depot	The start/return point of a pick route (the pack/dispatch staging origin). Walking distance is measured from there. It's a special location you place and drag on the warehouse map, so it can be renamed and moved; the Visual Pick Routes map shows it as a green dot labelled with whatever you called it. A warehouse with no depot placed sequences routes from the middle of the layout instead.
Special location	A named non-storage marker on the warehouse map: the Depot, the Returns Station where returns get processed, or the Wholesale Station where wholesale cartons and pallets get staged for a retailer's carrier. Not bins — they hold no inventory and carry no scannable label. One of each per warehouse, placed from Locations in the map editor.
Bay	The map position (rack section) a route stop lands at. Its bay label is the address a picker walks to.

Receiving

Term	What it means
Parked scan	During scan-to-receive, a unit that's been scanned against a PO line that has no bin yet. It's counted (amber on the progress bar) but isn't stock until a location is chosen — scan a bin label or pick one on the row and it books itself.

Returns

Term	What it means
Disposition	The decision of what to do with a returned unit after inspection: Restock (back to sellable), Quarantine (hold), Dispose (write off), or Return to vendor. Auto-suggested from the inspection result.
Inspection result	What you found when checking a returned unit: Undamaged, Opened (still resellable), Defective, or Wrong item. It constrains which dispositions are allowed.
Blind RMA	A return for an order Canopy never had — most often one that shipped before the brand moved to Canopy. You create it by hand with the Blind return (no source order) switch on the Create RMA form and add the items by SKU. It receives and restocks like any RMA, but never refunds, syncs to a store, or buys a return label.
RTS (return to sender)	A return whose parcel the carrier brought back — undeliverable, refused, bad address — rather than one the shopper sent. It's a return type (the other is a customer return): the RMA carries an RTS badge, the Returns list has a Returned to sender filter, and RTS returns aren't counted in a customer's returns.
Resend as-is	Completing an RTS return with zero receipts: inspection found the box intact, so nothing is received or restocked — the parcel is relabelled and sent out again. The RMA shows a Resent as-is badge.
Refund type	What the customer gets: Refund (cash back), Store credit, Exchange, Replacement, Warranty (manual review), or No financial action.
Channel refund	A refund the store issued on its own, with no items received in Canopy. The RMA's Refund card notes it as Already refunded in the sales channel, and it counts against what the order can still refund. See Refunds.
Box of record	A parcel relabelled on its way out is one box under successive labels; the label its relabel chain ends in speaks for the box, so an RTS return raised against an earlier label lands on that one. See Returned-to-sender returns.

Fulfillment

Term	What it means
Allocation	Reserving available stock against an order so it's ready to pick.
Backordered	An order or line waiting on restock because stock wasn't available to allocate or pick. The Backorders report lists every SKU with unmet demand.
Replenish (order status)	An order whose stock is reserved but sits in overstock rather than a pickable bin — allocation found the units, the pick face didn't. It can't be picked normally: top up the pick face (Replenishment, below) or ship it from overstock through Bulk Ship. Distinct from Backordered, where there is no stock to reserve at all.
On Hold	An order parked by a person or system decision rather than by stock — an operator, the client, the sales channel, a payment check, or the system itself (the order records which). It sits out of allocation and picking until released, and the Backorders report ignores it.
Unfulfillable	The order status a picker's "can't fulfil this" call lands an order in: the stock the system expected isn't there, so the order is pulled out of the pick list (its tote is flagged) and waits for an operator to fix the stock or cancel. Distinct from Backordered, where the system already knows it's short.
Externally Fulfilled (Ext. Fulfilled)	An order (or a line) shipped by someone other than this warehouse — the sales channel reported the fulfilment, or an automation rule marked the SKU externally fulfilled. Counts as completed; any pack in progress is cancelled when the whole order flips.
Sell ahead	A per-client switch (Clients → client detail, admin-only) that lets the channel push advertise units on an open PO as sellable before they arrive, up to each PO line's sell-ahead quantity. Those units are never on-hand or allocatable — an order that sells one waits on the PO, which is what the Backorders report's Covered by PO column counts.
Replenishment	Topping up a pick face from reserve/overstock when it drops below its rule's minimum, so pickers don't run dry. Driven by per-SKU and bulk rules; see Warehouse Ops.
Gather pallet	The first half of a two-person replenishment: one operator pulls a pallet, empties what several pick faces need onto a cart, and records what came off it (Gather pallet on the Replenishment worklist, or Drop off later on a task). The stock stays booked on the pallet — a cart isn't a tracked location — and the task shows "Picked N" until a second operator walks it to the pick faces and completes the move.
Wholesale (WHL)	A bulk business-to-business order rather than a single-shopper DTC one. Marking an order wholesale pulls it out of the retail pick pipeline (only allowed before picking).
Postage type	The specific carrier service a label is bought as (e.g. USPS Ground Advantage, UPS Standard), drawn from the client's carrier service catalog. Precedence at label time: manual override → automation-rule override → channel shipping-method mapping.
Generic label	A label CanopyWMS prints itself instead of buying one from a carrier — no postage, no carrier scan, and an empty tracking number until you attach one. Its shipment is marked shipped by hand (Mark shipped, once the parcel has left with the courier or the customer) rather than by a carrier scan.
Carrier account	The credentials a label is bought with. A client can hold its own accounts (Shipping → Carriers, one per carrier, admin-only), and the tenant keeps Shared Carriers — house accounts every client falls back to. Each account records who fronts the label cost (the 3PL or the client), whether it joins rate shopping, and which is the default. Stallion Express is one carrier type among several (UPS, FedEx, a generic webhook handoff). A label is bought through whichever account the client's sourcing mode resolves — own accounts, the shared house accounts, or both — with a legacy Stallion key as the last-resort fallback.
Voided label	A shipping label that's been cancelled/refunded. Voided labels are hidden by default in the Shipments report (a "Valid only" chip); voiding can't be undone and invalidates the carrier label.
Partial shipment (split order)	Shipping the units an order can fill now and sending the rest in a later parcel, instead of holding the whole order for one missing line. An order short at allocation enters picking anyway for what's in stock when the brand allows it; a unit missing at the bench is declared short. Allowed per order, per sales channel, or per client — see split orders. A wholesale order reads a separate client default, Wholesale partial shipments, and ignores the DTC and channel ones. A brand can also set a minimum to split (units, value) and a wait before splitting; an order under either is PARTIAL HELD and waits whole.
Partially Shipped	The order status while a split rests between cycles: at least one parcel has gone, units are still owed. On a retail order the remainder re-allocates and re-picks on its own; on a wholesale order the next shipment is planned by hand on the order page (assign, Allocate partial shipment, pick, box). The order closes as Fulfilled once nothing is owed.
Split across warehouses (sibling order)	Sending some of a retail order's units to another of your warehouses before the pick, from the order sheet's Split across warehouses. The units become a sibling order at that warehouse; the first order (the parent) keeps the channel order number, and every sibling shares it. The customer's order is counted once across its siblings. Undoing a split is the same action on the sibling, sending the units back. Not the same thing as a partial shipment, which splits an order's parcels in time rather than its units across sites.
Declared short / declare short (at pack)	A packer marking a line's still-unverified units as not going in this box — lost, damaged, or held back. It creates a Short Picks row and, unless replaced, splits the order. There's no un-declare; cancelling the pack is the door. See declaring a short.
Keeper parcel	On a split that has closed, the one parcel whose carrier scans drive the order's status. The earlier parcels' votes are retired at close-out, so "Shipped" fires once rather than once per box.
Put-back	Returning already-picked units to stock via a staging bin. Cancelling a picked order, cancelling a pick list, clearing a flagged tote, abandoning a short pick, packing an externally-fulfilled tote, or a lot recall all create put-back work. Recalled units go to quarantine, not a sellable bin. See Warehouse Ops.
Merged (order status)	An order your team merged into another: its lines were copied onto the master order, which ships them in one box, so the merged order holds no work of its own. It reads Shipped once the master's parcel goes out; meanwhile only its tags and notes can be edited, and unmerging before the pick puts it back as it was. See Merging orders.
Goodwill re-send (client re-send)	Sending units of an order again at the client's request rather than for a loss — recorded as reason Client request with disposition Goodwill, and billed as a fresh order. It's the one reship a brand can start itself, from the order in the portal. See Reship.
Split policy (minimum to split, wait before splitting)	The two limits on when an order that may split actually does: the units and value its in-stock part must reach, and the hours it must have been short. Set per client, and overridable per order by an automation rule or the order's own values — `0` means none. See Split orders.
Warehouse routing rule	An automation rule, on the Warehouse Routing trigger, that chooses the warehouse a new order ships from: candidate warehouses in priority order, a way to choose among them — Fixed, Follow channel, First that can fill or Most units — and what happens when none qualifies, Backorder at one of them or Hold for review. With Re-route backorders on (First that can fill or Most units only), stock arriving can move a backordered order to the warehouse the rule then picks. An order's own Ship from outranks it. Built under Automation → Rules; the rules also run again on their own when stock arrives, an order is edited, or units are handed to Canopy. See Warehouse Routing rules and When routing runs again on its own.
Can fill	Whether one warehouse's free stock — sellable on-hand less what's already reserved there — covers everything an order will allocate. It's what a routing rule's First that can fill judges — Most units counts how much of the order each warehouse can fill — and what a No warehouse can fill this order hold is about.

SKU packaging

Term	What it means
Kit / kit parent	A kit (bundle) is a SKU built from component SKUs. The kit parent is the bundle SKU; components pack individually.
Bottleneck part	The component in shortest supply relative to how many a kit needs — it caps how many complete kits can be built.
Virtual stock	How many complete kits can currently be built, set by the bottleneck part.
Unit of measure (UOM) / pack levels	The forms a SKU is handled in — each → inner pack → case → master case → pallet — and how many base eaches each holds. Stock is always counted in base eaches regardless of the form it's stored in.
FEFO / FIFO	A SKU's lot-rotation strategy (a client/SKU default, set on the SKU — not in the Create Batch dropdown). FEFO = First Expiry First Out (pick the soonest-to-expire stock first, for expiry-dated goods); FIFO = First In First Out (oldest received first). Separate from the batch-grouping pick strategy above.
SKU merge / merged SKU	Retiring a duplicate SKU into the one you keep: its stock moves onto the kept SKU (a SKU merge ledger row per bin), its open order lines re-point, and its code keeps resolving to the kept SKU on scans and imports. A merged SKU holds no stock and can't be ordered, received or used in a kit again. See Merging SKUs.
Needs review (SKU)	A SKU an import created on the fly that may duplicate one you already have. The SKU list's Needs review view offers Map to existing SKU (a merge) or Keep as new SKU.

Stats & the shell

Term	What it means
Tenant / client (brand)	Your tenant is your entire 3PL company account. A client (brand) is one company you fulfill for. A 3PL has many clients because it warehouses and ships for many brands, and nearly every record is scoped to a client. See Getting started.
Default warehouse	Two settings share the name. A client's (Clients → client detail, admins only) is where its new orders, purchase orders, returns and work orders go when nothing else names a warehouse — on a multi-warehouse tenant, an order that nothing places is refused without one. A person's (Workforce → Users, admins only) is where the app opens for them in a new tab; they can still switch. See the warehouse switcher.
Task role	A restriction on a `TENANT_OPERATOR` to one floor task — Receiving, Putaway, Picking, or Packing — set on the Workforce → Assign Task board. Someone in a task column reaches only that task's modules (the floor app's tiles narrow to match); Full access lifts it. Admins are never restricted.
Magic link	The passwordless sign-in an invited user can choose: the invite email arrives, they open the link, and they're in — or they use an OAuth provider you've enabled. There is no password to set.
Median / P90 ship time	Median = the middle ship time across orders. P90 = the time 90% of orders beat (the 90th percentile) — a worst-case read that's less sensitive to outliers than the maximum.
IANA timezone	A standard named timezone (e.g. `America/New_York`, `Asia/Tokyo`) set per warehouse. It decides which calendar day a shipment's UTC timestamp counts toward for SLA.
System notifications (the bell's System tab)	The record of your own actions, kept for you alone: queued work that finished (an invoice emailed, a manual channel sync) and the confirmations and errors you saw as a toast. In-app only, never emailed or subscribed to; the Activity tab is other people's work. See Notifications.
Share link (pack video)	A public link to a pack's video that anyone with the link can watch without signing in, until it expires (1, 7, 15 or 30 days, never past the clip's keep-for) or is revoked. There is no PIN: the link is the key. Staff can always make one; a brand's own users can while Brand may share links is on for that client. A link covers the whole pack or a cut of up to three minutes, and every open is logged against the link. See Pack video.

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