What WMS System to Choose in 2026?
A complete guide to the most important features that actually determine warehouse efficiency.
Published: 2 grudnia 2025
Choosing a WMS system is one of the most important decisions in logistics. When done correctly, it saves tens or even hundreds of thousands of PLN annually. Below you will find 20 key features that a modern warehouse management system must have to truly speed up work, reduce errors, and lower costs.
We describe each function in three parts:
- Impact on Warehouse Performance: Our rating on a scale of 1–10 (based on data from our implementations).
- Why It's Critical: Why this feature is important in a warehouse management system.
- How It Should Work: How it looks in practice in the best-in-class WMS systems.
1. Automatic Suggestion of Putaway Location upon Goods Receipt
Impact on Warehouse Performance: 9/10
Why It's Critical: Warehouse workers put goods away "where it's easiest for them," resulting in location chaos after a few months, leading to pallets being searched for dozens of minutes.
How It Should Work: The system, at the moment of receipt, analyzes the dimensions, weight, expiration date, and current occupancy for the given product, then suggests the optimal location. The warehouse worker accepts it with one scan or chooses another from the provided alternatives. The system records the goods receipt date, content data, and its location.
2. Full Lot and Serial Number Tracking (Traceability)
Impact on Warehouse Performance: 8/10
Why It's Critical: A complaint, product recall, or quality audit without traceability means dozens of hours spent searching for who, from whom, when, and why.
How It Should Work: Every warehouse operation should be automatically recorded in the system, including detailed information about the product batch, where the goods came from, who performed the operation, and to whom the product was ultimately shipped.
3. FIFO (First-In, First-Out), FEFO (First-Expired, First-Out), Automatic Issuance of Goods with the Shortest Expiration Date
Impact on Warehouse Performance: 9/10
Why It's Critical: Preventing the disposal of expired products in the food or pharmaceutical industry represents serious financial losses for any company.
How It Should Work: During picking, the system always indicates the batch with the shortest expiration date and prevents the warehouse worker from picking goods that were placed in the warehouse later. The system should also allow blocking (aging) of goods that should not be issued before a predetermined date or period.
4. Sales Order Reservations
Impact on Warehouse Performance: 7/10
Why It's Critical: Product reservation enables efficient inventory management, as multiple customers can order the same item at the same time. Reservations significantly improve not only your company's image but also make inventory levels more realistic.
How It Should Work: Automatic reservation of goods for an order upon receipt of the order from the ERP system or online store.
5. Picking Route Optimization
Impact on Warehouse Performance: 9/10
Why It's Critical: In a warehouse over 2000 m², a warehouse worker wastes 30% of their time walking and searching for goods. They waste not only time but also unnecessarily consume power/gas in forklifts.
How It Should Work: The system calculates the shortest picking route for an order, groups several orders at once, guiding the picker step-by-step through successive locations in the warehouse.
6. Hotspots, Fast Access Zones
Impact on Warehouse Performance: 9/10
Why It's Critical: In a warehouse, just like in life, the Pareto principle applies (20% of goods generate 80% of turnover). Keeping the most popular items (bestsellers) scattered throughout the warehouse is a pure waste of time and money.
How It Should Work: The ability to set up "hotspot" zones for fast-moving products, ideally close to loading ramps.
7. Warehouse and Production Buffers
Impact on Warehouse Performance: 7/10
Why It's Critical: The ability to transfer products to warehouse buffers streamlines processes in any manufacturing company and signals that a certain good or raw material should be ordered because production might run out.
How It Should Work: Dedicated locations for internal production. The raw material or product transferred to the warehouse buffer still exists in the system, but disappears from the warehouse system after the manufacturing process is complete.
8. Dedicated View for Forklift Operators
Impact on Warehouse Performance: 9/10
Why It's Critical: The warehouse operator should be able to pick up goods for production or active warehouse orders without hesitation.
How It Should Work: A 10-12 inch industrial tablet with a clear issuance program, large buttons, and text is a key element in streamlining the order picking process: where to go, what to pick up/put away, one green "Issued" button.
9. Warehouse Layout Design
Impact on Warehouse Performance: 8/10
Why It's Critical: Every warehouse has a different layout, number of racks, and shelves. Layout schemes hardcoded in the software do not work well in the long run.
How It Should Work: Reflecting the warehouse structure in the warehouse program is the minimum a warehouse program must have nowadays. Editing and adding racks should be available to every manager.
10. 2D and 3D Warehouse Visualization
Impact on Warehouse Performance: 7/10
Why It's Critical: Without visualization, you don't know which racks are empty and which are overflowing. How does the occupancy of the entire warehouse look? You may not be able to effectively prepare the company for peak season or perform manual occupancy optimization.
How It Should Work: From within the system, you should be able to preview warehouse occupancy, along with an indication of which products "sit too long" or which must be issued first.
11. Unlimited Number of Virtual Warehouses
Impact on Warehouse Performance: 9/10
Why It's Critical: You can create warehouses for a specific client, cyclical orders, manage warehouses in other locations, or manage outdoor yard storage.
How It Should Work: You create any number of virtual warehouses without incurring additional licensing fees or commissioning additional work from programmers.
12. Built-in Module for Printing ZPL Logistics Labels
Impact on Warehouse Performance: 8/10
Why It's Critical: An additional program for printing labels means costs and integration problems.
How It Should Work: You design ZPL labels in the system, which are automatically printed during warehouse operations (GRN, Goods Issue Note, Stock Transfer, Internal Issue, Internal Receipt) on the barcode printer specified by the system.
13. Fully Online Operation
Impact on Warehouse Performance: 8/10
Why It's Critical: You work without unnecessary updates or driver installations.
How It Should Work: Logging into the system should be done via a web browser from any location and device in your company. Barcode printers connect to the Ethernet network, are registered in the warehouse system, and linked to specific warehouse operations or operators.
14. Native Support for Data Collectors and Industrial Tablets
Impact on Warehouse Performance: 10/10
Why It's Critical: Performing every warehouse operation using a data collector with a built-in barcode scanner eliminates 100% of errors during the process.
How It Should Work: You select the warehouse operation, scan the location and product barcode, then enter the quantity you are issuing from the warehouse. The system records this operation in the background. Such a web application or PWA (Progressive Web App) should be available without additional installation files (APK) or drivers from the terminals of the most popular brands on the market, e.g., Zebra, Honeywell, Datalogic, M3 Mobile, etc.
15. Cycle Counting (Continuous Inventory) Without Stopping Warehouse Operations
Impact on Warehouse Performance: 10/10
Why It's Critical: A traditional, manual stocktake takes 2-3 days, during which most warehouse operations are required to be suspended.
How It Should Work: Every day, during normal work, you scan 30-100 locations, update inventory levels on an ongoing basis, and react to any irregularities immediately.
16. Automatic Generation of Warehouse Documents (GRN, GIN, Stock Transfer, etc.)
Impact on Warehouse Performance: 8/10
Why It's Critical: Manually creating warehouse documents in Excel is hours of lost time and frequent mistakes. GRN (Goods Received Note) and GIN (Goods Issued Note) are crucial for correct accounting reconciliation of the warehouse.
How It Should Work: Reports on warehouse flows should be available immediately for the selected period, with the possibility of automatic export to the ERP system.
17. Multi-language Interface
Impact on Warehouse Performance: 7/10
Why It's Critical: Foreign-language employees make fewer errors when the user interface is created in their native language. You also have the possibility of hiring employees from any country.
How It Should Work: Polish, English, German are currently the standard in a warehouse system. The system should also allow adding other languages, e.g., Russian.
18. Real-Time Warehouse Orders
Impact on Warehouse Performance: 9/10
Why It's Critical: The warehouse manager needs to see live which orders are being processed and which are experiencing delays.
How It Should Work: A clear dashboard for the manager that allows a live view of what is happening in the warehouse, changing priorities, as well as detecting and reacting to delays.
19. Shipment Verification Before Issuance
Impact on Warehouse Performance: 9/10
Why It's Critical: The most expensive warehouse errors involve shipping the wrong goods to the customer.
How It Should Work: Before loading the goods onto the trailer, the operator should perform comparison scans of the customer's order against the warehouse order.
20. Integrations with ERP, Stores, and Couriers
Impact on Warehouse Performance: 9/10
Why It's Critical: Manually generating warehouse orders is the biggest source of delays and errors.
How It Should Work: Warehouse orders flow in automatically, and then statuses and stock levels are automatically returned to the ERP system.
Author: Łukasz Russak
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