Warehouse Studio
Table of Contents
1. Use Cases
Quick links: Move the most-picked stock toward packing before peak season ｜ Check whether picking got shorter after re-slotting ｜ Re-slot within a low-volume merchant's own area
Case 1: Re-plan locations before peak season and move the most-picked stock toward packing
Situation: A big sales event is coming, and pickers say they keep walking to the farthest rows. The warehouse supervisor wants to re-slot before order volume spikes, but can't say for sure which locations are really picked the most, or whether the prime spots next to the packing stations hold products that rarely ship.
Use this feature: In the "Pick heatmap" tab, choose the last 30 or 90 days. Compare the colours with the dashed outlines of packing stations and docks to find bays that are "far from shipping but hot" and "close to shipping but barely picked", then click a bay to see its product ranking and decide which products to move.
Result: You get a move list based on actual pick counts: popular products go to bays near packing, slow movers give up the prime spots, and peak-season picking routes get shorter.
Case 2: Check whether picking actually got shorter after re-slotting
Situation: Last month a batch of best-sellers was moved to racks near the packing stations, and the supervisor wants to know whether pickers really walk less now.
Use this feature: Use a custom period to look at a stretch of time before the move and another after it, and compare where the dark bays fall in each.
Result: If the dark bays cluster near packing after the move, popular products are indeed picked close by. If dark bays remain far away, click them to see which products they hold and plan the next round of changes.
Case 3: Re-slot within a low-volume merchant's own area
Situation: The warehouse stores several merchants in separate zones. A merchant with modest shipping volume says its picking is always slower, but on the whole-warehouse heatmap its zone is almost entirely the lightest shade next to the big merchants, so you can't tell which of its bays are picked more.
Use this feature: Select that merchant in the filter bar. Shades are then cut from its own pick counts, other merchants' bays are reduced to outlines, and the view moves to its zone; grey bays are where its stock sits but nothing shipped during the period.
Result: You get a move list inside that merchant's own zone: its most-shipped products move to the bays in the zone closest to the shipping flow, and products that haven't shipped give up their spots.
2. Feature Guide
Warehouse Studio brings the warehouse floor layout, the 3D warehouse, the pick heatmap and space utilization together in one place, always for the warehouse you currently have selected in the console. The "Pick heatmap" draws a period's pick counts on the warehouse floor plan, so you can see at a glance which rack bays are picked most and how far they are from packing stations and docks — a basis for re-slotting decisions.
Jump to: Four Tabs ｜ Before You Start ｜ Reading the Heatmap ｜ Period, Merchant and Floor ｜ Single-Merchant View ｜ Side Panel ｜ What Is Counted ｜ Space Utilization
2.1 Four Tabs
Opening Warehouse Studio requires the "Operations Insights - Read" permission, which lets you view all four tabs; no warehouse, inventory or order permission is needed. This permission is separate from the warehouse settings permissions: even if you can manage warehouse settings, it has to be granted on its own; see Permission reference.
| Tab | Purpose | Additional permission |
|---|---|---|
| Warehouse layout | Place racks, docks, packing stations and inbound staging areas on each floor, and bind racks to shelf rows. You can also add building structure such as walls, pillars and offices, or cut away corners that are not part of the warehouse with "Excluded area"; see the FAQ. After saving, click "Publish warehouse layout" to make it the official layout; the pick heatmap only uses the published layout | Editing and publishing the layout, and adding or renaming floors, need the "Operations Insights - Write" permission; without it the tab is view-only |
| 3D warehouse | See in a 3D scene where current stock sits, or pick a date to replay that day's operations. Both include data from every merchant in this warehouse; see Notes | None |
| Pick heatmap | See each rack bay's pick count for a period on the floor plan (covered in the sections below) | None |
| Space utilization | Find unlocked empty locations by floor and zone, compare bay occupancy, and inspect each layer and grid; see Space Utilization | None |
While the "Warehouse layout" tab is processing the layout (for example loading, saving or publishing it), the other three tabs are temporarily disabled; you can switch once it finishes. Unsaved layout changes do not disable the tabs, but leaving the "Warehouse layout" tab asks first: choose "Save and leave" or "Discard and leave" to switch, or "Keep editing" to stay.
2.2 Before You Start
- Publish a layout first: The heatmap is drawn on the published layout. If nothing has been published, the tab only shows "No layout has been published. Publish one in the Layout tab first.". Changes in a draft do not appear in the heatmap until you publish.
- Bind racks to locations: A bay needs bound locations before its picks can be counted. Racks without bindings are drawn as outlines with no fill; see Reading the Heatmap.
- Have the "Operations Insights - Read" permission: The same permission that opens Warehouse Studio; no orders or inventory permission is needed. While the "Warehouse layout" tab is processing the layout, the "Pick heatmap" tab is temporarily disabled; see Four Tabs.
2.3 Reading the Heatmap
The heatmap colours bays: every layer and every grid of one rack column add up to one bay. Whether stock sits on an upper or lower layer, the picker walks to the same spot, so layers are not counted separately. Each pick from a location into a picking basket counts once, no matter how many units were picked — the heatmap shows "how many times someone had to walk here".
| What you see | What it means |
|---|---|
| Orange, up to 4 shades from light to dark | Bays picked during the period; the darker, the more picks. The system sorts the pick counts of every bay with picks, across all floors, from low to high and splits them into four equal groups (quartiles) to set the shades: across the whole warehouse when viewing it, or only that merchant's bays when a merchant is selected. The legend in the lower-left corner shows the actual pick range and daily average of each shade (for example "13–40 picks (avg. 0.43–1.3/day)"). When counts are too concentrated to form 4 distinct ranges, shades merge and the legend lists only the ranges that exist |
| Grey (legend: "In stock, not picked" for the whole warehouse, "Stocked by this merchant, not picked" with a merchant selected) | Not picked once during the period, but at least one location in the bay holds stock now; with a merchant selected, only that merchant's stock counts. Stock sitting there without shipping is the first candidate to give up a good spot when re-slotting |
| Outline only, no fill (legend: "No stock" for the whole warehouse, "No stock of this merchant" with a merchant selected) | Not picked during the period and no stock now. With a merchant selected, only that merchant's stock counts: bays holding only other merchants' stock are outlines too, so that merchant's zone stands out. Racks or columns without bound locations are also drawn as outlines only |
| Dashed outline with a name | Dock, Packing station, and any Inbound staging area without a bound location. They only mark positions, so you can judge how far hot bays are from the shipping flow |
| Grey hatching | Wall, Pillar and Office only mark positions: they are not coloured, ranked or clickable; offices show their name and door |
An Inbound staging area bound to a location counts as one bay: it is coloured by pick count like rack bays, appears in the ranking, and can be clicked to see its products; without a bound location it is drawn as a dashed outline instead. Decorations such as forklifts, pallet jacks, pallets and roll cages are not drawn on the heatmap. "Excluded area" is outside the warehouse: it stays blank, and the outline follows the warehouse's real shape.
Checking a single bay: Hover over a bay to see "rack name · column | picks (daily average) | rank"; bays with 0 picks have no rank and show whether they hold stock instead; with a merchant selected, they show whether they hold that merchant's stock (for example "0 picks | No stock of this merchant"), so such a bay may still hold other merchants' stock. Ranks cover all floors together, and only the selected merchant's bays when a merchant is selected.
Daily average: The period's picks divided by its number of days (both ends included). It appears in the bay tooltip, the legend and next to the total in the side panel. The decimal places depend on the size after rounding: whole numbers from 10 up, one decimal place from 1 to under 10, two decimal places from 0.01 to under 1, so 9.96 shows as "10" and 0.996 as "1.0"; above 0 but under 0.01 it shows "<0.01", and with no picks it shows "0". When the period includes today, today counts as a full day although it isn't over, so the daily average reads slightly low.
Zooming and moving: The whole floor is shown when the tab opens. Use the "Zoom in" and "Zoom out" buttons in the lower-right corner, and drag the floor plan to pan; click "Fit to view" to show the whole floor again. Changing the period or merchant keeps the current zoom and position; switching floors, including the automatic switch after you select a merchant, shows the whole floor again.
2.4 Period, Merchant and Floor
| Filter | How to use it |
|---|---|
| Period | Defaults to the last 30 days including today. Click a preset — "Last 7 days", "Last 30 days" or "Last 90 days" — or pick custom start and end dates. A period can span at most 90 days, both ends included; dates follow your organization's time zone |
| Merchant | Defaults to "All merchants", the whole warehouse. The drop-down lists the merchants linked to this warehouse and can be searched by name; choose one to see only its picks and stock (see Single-Merchant View), and click the clear button on the right of the drop-down to return to the whole warehouse |
| Floor | Appears only when the layout has floors; switches the floor you are viewing. Shades and ranks are calculated across all floors together, so the same shade means the same pick range on every floor and floors can be compared directly |
The selectable dates are limited by your plan's data retention: dates earlier than the retention window, and future dates, cannot be selected. For example, if your plan keeps 30 days of data, you can view at most the last 30 days including today, and "Last 90 days" automatically starts from the earliest available day.
Changing the period, the merchant or the floor clears the selected bay, and the side panel returns to the bay ranking.
2.5 Single-Merchant View
On the whole-warehouse heatmap, the shades are driven by high-volume merchants: a low-volume merchant's bays mostly fall into the lightest shade, so you can't see which parts of its own zone are hot. That is why, for the whole warehouse, the legend shows the hint "For a merchant with low shipping volume, select that merchant to view its bays". Once you select a merchant:
| Item | With a merchant selected |
|---|---|
| Orange shades | Quartiles are recalculated from that merchant's picked bays only; the darkest shade marks the merchant's own most-picked bays, with no comparison to other merchants |
| Grey and outlines | Only that merchant's current stock counts: bays holding its stock with no picks in the period are grey, and other merchants' bays are outlines only; the legend reads "Stocked by this merchant, not picked" and "No stock of this merchant" |
| Floor | When the data loads, the view switches to the floor where that merchant has the most picks; with no picks in the period, to the floor with the most of its stocked bays; with neither, it stays on the current floor. This happens only when you change the merchant, not when you change the period afterwards. If you switch floors yourself after changing the merchant but before the data loads, or the load fails, the automatic switch is cancelled and does not happen when you change the period later either |
| View | Keeps the current zoom and position instead of zooming to that merchant's bays; an automatic switch to another floor shows that whole floor |
| Side panel | The total, other floors, not on the floor plan, busiest bays and product ranking all count that merchant only |
2.6 Side Panel
With no bay selected, the panel summarizes the period:
| Item | Content |
|---|---|
| Picks in period | Picks across the whole warehouse (or the selected merchant) during the period, including every floor and "Not on the floor plan" below; the figure in brackets is the daily average |
| Other floors | Picks from bays on floors you are not currently viewing |
| Not on the floor plan | Picks from locations that are not drawn on the published layout, for example locations not yet bound to any rack, or removed from the layout. They still count toward the total; they just can't be drawn |
| Busiest bays | The 10 bays with the most picks on the current floor; ties are sorted by bay name. Ranks cover all floors together, so the ranking for the second floor may start at "Rank 4". Click a row to select that bay and highlight it on the floor plan |
After you click a bay (on the floor plan or in the ranking), the panel switches to that bay's "Products": the products picked from this bay during the period, the top 20 by pick count, with ties sorted by SKU. Each row shows the SKU, product name, merchant and pick count; with a merchant selected, only that merchant's products are listed. When more than 20 products were picked, the last row totals the remaining products and their picks. Click "Back" to return to the bay ranking.
2.7 What Is Counted
- Every merchant in the warehouse by default: Picks for all merchants in this warehouse are included, not only the merchants your account can access, and the product ranking also lists other merchants' products with their merchant names. Counting only some merchants would show bays that other merchants keep busy as cold and mislead slotting decisions. To look at one merchant, use the Single-Merchant View; the merchants you can choose are likewise not limited to those your account can access.
- Stock as of now: Grey and outlines are based on current stock, not stock during the period. A bay that held stock during the period but is empty now is drawn as an outline; a bay with no picks in the period is grey whenever it holds stock now, even if that stock arrived after the period ended.
- Shown on the current published layout: Picks are counted per location and drawn where that location is now. If a layout republished during the period moved a location to another rack, the whole period's picks for it are drawn at the new position; locations removed from the layout are counted under "Not on the floor plan".
- Picks only: Put-backs, relocations, shipping and other movements are not counted. A pick is defined the same way as in Picking History.
- Calculated on demand: Numbers are calculated when the tab loads, the period changes or the merchant changes, and include today's picks so far. The screen does not refresh by itself; reload the page to see the latest numbers.
2.8 Space Utilization: Find Empty Locations Before Receiving
Before incoming goods arrive, use "Space utilization" to find areas with empty locations, then apply product and putaway rules to choose where to store them. This tab uses the published layout and current stock across all merchants. There is no merchant filter, so locations occupied by another merchant cannot be mistaken for empty ones.
- Select "Floor" and "Warehouse zone". Occupancy is bound locations holding stock ÷ bound locations within that scope. Each location counts once regardless of unit quantity; unbound or unavailable cells are excluded from the denominator.
- Read the legend: green means all known locations have no stock; deeper blue means a higher occupied proportion. Fully locked bays are yellow, and bays containing unknown cells are grey. Bands stay fixed across floors, zones and refreshes. Locked locations with stock still count as occupied, so locked and occupied counts may overlap.
- Click a bay on the plan or in the "Bays with most empty locations" ranking to inspect the locations and statuses of each layer and grid. Turn on "Only unlocked empty locations" to keep only locations with no stock and no lock. You can copy a location code.
- "Locations outside the plan" lists regular locations across the warehouse that are absent from the published plan. It follows the zone filter, but not the floor filter; these locations do not enter the current floor's summary. Bind them in the layout tab and publish again to put them on the plan.
Any physical stock counts as occupied, even if allocated to orders or unavailable for sale. Staging areas, virtual locations and carriers are excluded from regular storage capacity. Unbound or unavailable cells and locations with an unknown lock state are not treated as usable empty locations.
"Refresh" reloads the layout and stock; the screen shows when that read finished. Operations can change individual locations while the data is loading. This is not a stocktake at one instant, and it does not reserve locations. If the layout changes during loading, the screen asks you to refresh instead of showing incomplete statistics.
💡 Tip: Occupancy measures the number of storage locations, not volume, load capacity or remaining carton capacity. A partly filled location counts as occupied. After finding an empty location, check product dimensions, temperature requirements and putaway rules.
3. FAQ
3.1 FAQ
▪ Why is Warehouse Studio missing from the menu, or does opening it directly show "This feature requires a plan upgrade"?
This feature is available on Advanced, Pro and Enterprise, including partner plans that inherit Advanced features. It is unavailable on Standard. Check your company's plan and your "Operations Insights - Read" permission. When the feature is unavailable, menu and pinned entries are hidden and direct access is blocked; floor management on the warehouse detail page has the same restriction. Downgrading does not delete saved layouts or floors.
▪ Opening Warehouse Studio only shows "Warehouse Studio read permission is required.". Why?
Your account does not have the "Operations Insights - Read" permission. It is separate from the warehouse settings permissions, so it has to be granted on its own even if you can manage warehouse settings; ask an administrator to tick it in your operator permissions; see Permissions. Editing or publishing the layout and adding or renaming floors also need the "Operations Insights - Write" permission.
▪ The "Pick heatmap" tab is greyed out and I can't open it. Why?
The "Warehouse layout" tab is processing the layout (for example loading, saving or publishing it); the tab becomes available again once it finishes. This tab needs no extra permission: if you can open Warehouse Studio, you can use it.
Unsaved layout changes do not grey out the tab; clicking it first asks whether to save or discard them; see Four Tabs.
▪ The tab only shows "No layout has been published. Publish one in the Layout tab first.". What now?
This warehouse has no published layout yet. Finish the layout in the "Warehouse layout" tab and click "Publish warehouse layout"; the heatmap switches to the newly published layout automatically.
▪ Why are some racks drawn as outlines with no colour?
Hover over them to tell two cases apart:
- Shows "0 picks | No stock" or "0 picks | No stock of this merchant": The bay is bound to locations, but was not picked during the period and holds no stock now. With a merchant selected, the tooltip reads "0 picks | No stock of this merchant": it only means none of that merchant's stock, and the bay may still hold other merchants' stock.
- Shows nothing: The rack, or these columns, are not bound to a shelf row, so the system doesn't know which locations they hold and can't count picks. Bind the racks to shelf rows in the "Warehouse layout" tab and publish again. Locations need a row, column and layer before they can be bound; see Shelves.
▪ After selecting a merchant, why does the same bay have a different shade?
That is expected. With a merchant selected, the shades are cut from that merchant's counts only (see Single-Merchant View): 20 picks may be the lightest shade for the whole warehouse but the darkest for a low-volume merchant. Compare using the actual ranges in the legend in the lower-left corner.
▪ The bay held stock during the period. Why is it only an outline?
Grey and outlines are based on current stock, not stock during the period; a bay that held stock during the period but is empty now is drawn as an outline. See What Is Counted.
▪ If I pick 10 units at once, how many picks is that?
One. The heatmap counts how many times a picker had to walk to the bay, regardless of how many units each pick took.
▪ Can I see the upper and lower layers of a column separately?
No. The heatmap works per bay and adds the layers together. To see one location's picks, filter Picking History by location code.
▪ The heatmap shows more picks than Picking History. Which one is wrong?
Neither. Picking History only lists the merchants your account can access, while the heatmap for the whole warehouse includes picks for every merchant in this warehouse (see What Is Counted). Both define "one pick" the same way.
▪ Why does "Not on the floor plan" have picks?
Some picked locations are not drawn on the published layout — for example, they are not yet bound to any rack, or were removed from the layout. Those picks still count toward "Picks in period". To get them on the plan, bind them in the "Warehouse layout" tab and publish again.
▪ Why can't I select earlier dates?
A period can span at most 90 days and cannot start before your plan's data retention window; see Period, Merchant and Floor.
▪ After a layout change, where are earlier picks drawn?
At the locations' current positions. The heatmap always uses the current published layout and never restores the layout from that time; see What Is Counted.
▪ My warehouse isn't a rectangle, or has walls, pillars or offices. How do I draw that?
In the "Warehouse layout" tab, click "Add object", choose "Building structure", and set "Object type" to Wall, Pillar, Office or "Excluded area". An "Excluded area" cuts away a corner that is not part of the warehouse: drag it there, then set its width and depth. Combine several to make an L or U shape; they may overlap. It only turns with "Rotate left 90°" and "Rotate right 90°", so exterior walls are always square. Each floor takes up to 50. This building structure is solid both on the layout and in the 3D warehouse:
- The 3D warehouse puts its floor and roof only over what remains. Each "Excluded area" (adjoining or overlapping ones count as one) is a hollow box with no roof, which looks like a wall from inside the warehouse or from outside the building. "Walk through" cannot enter the box; to look inside it, lower the camera into the box in "Warehouse overview", and from inside the box you can see out.
- An office's "Height (m)" is at least 3 m, which is also the default. In 3D you can see simple desks, chairs and ceiling lights through its windows, and the door is opaque; the furniture is placed automatically to suit the room, is only illustrative, cannot be edited, and "Walk through" cannot go inside. Each office has one door whatever its size: offices that overlap or share part of an edge count as one office, share it and form one room inside, while offices that only meet at a corner count separately. "2D layout" and the heatmap draw the door on the office's edge (a leaf swinging inward with its arc), where it is in 3D. The door is in the middle of the side at the bottom of "2D layout" when the office is unrotated; if a wall, a pillar, another office, an "Excluded area" or an exterior wall stands against that side, it moves to the top, right or left side, in that order. Blocked sides get no windows either, and an office blocked on all four sides has no door or windows. To put the door on another side, turn the office 90° or 180°.
- In "Walk through" you cannot walk through walls, pillars or offices, into an "Excluded area" or out of the building; you slide along them instead. Racks can still be walked through. When "POV mode" frames a shot automatically, it does not put the camera inside this building structure or frame through it either.
- Docks attach to the nearest exterior wall automatically, including the walls between the warehouse and an "Excluded area". A dock on such a wall has its apron and truck drawn inside the box, which needs about 19.3 m of depth in front of the dock and about 2.5 m more than the dock's width; where they don't fit (a courtyard or a shallow notch), only the doorway is drawn.
- When you drag objects in "2D layout", they stop flush against building structure, just as at the edge of the floor: racks, packing stations, inbound staging areas and decorations stop at an "Excluded area", a wall, a pillar or an office; walls, pillars and offices stop at an "Excluded area", racks, docks, packing stations and inbound staging areas, but may overlap one another to piece together an L-shaped office or a wall corner. Dragging diagonally slides along the edge and rounds the corner of a notch in one go. An "Excluded area" and docks are never held back, and docks still attach to the nearest exterior wall; objects selected together never hold each other back either.
- Nothing holds an object back when you add or rotate it, type its coordinates, width or depth, click "Align V coordinates" or "Duplicate selected racks", drag a dock, or move or enlarge an "Excluded area". An object that ends up reaching into an "Excluded area" this way turns red with "Object outside the warehouse area"; a rack, dock, packing station or inbound staging area overlapping a wall, pillar or office turns red with "Object footprints overlap". Move it clear before publishing in either case; you can drag such an object straight out.
- If the floor already has a path network, adding, moving, deleting, resizing or turning building structure makes it stale; click "Edit paths", then "Regenerate paths" before publishing. The regenerated paths go around walls, pillars, offices and every "Excluded area"; people and goods in "History replay" move along the paths, so they don't pass through them either.
▪ An order listed in the history replay won't open. Why?
The replay covers every merchant's operations in this warehouse, but the order detail page still follows your account's permissions: it needs the "Orders - Read" permission and only opens orders of merchants your account can access. Without that permission, the replay shows order numbers as plain text, without a link. For other merchants' orders, the replay shows only the order number and the related operations.
▪ I see "Switch your current warehouse to this one to edit". What happened?
You switched the console's current warehouse in another browser tab, while this studio page still shows the previous warehouse. Reload the page to view the warehouse that is now selected.
▪ Can I put goods away as soon as Space Utilization shows an empty location?
Do not decide from the colour alone. Green means no stock, but a bay may contain locked locations. Click the bay and enable "Only unlocked empty locations", then apply product and putaway rules. The screen does not reserve space or calculate remaining volume; see Space Utilization.
3.2 Notes
⚠️ Important
- For the whole warehouse, the heatmap and product ranking include pick counts for every merchant in this warehouse, which reveals each merchant's shipping frequency. Before sharing a screenshot or the numbers with a merchant, make sure no other merchant's data is on screen; to show one merchant, first select that merchant, so the colours, counts and product ranking on screen belong to that merchant only.
- The current stock and the history replay in "3D warehouse" likewise include data from every merchant in this warehouse, not only the merchants your account can access: current stock lists each merchant's products and quantities, and the replay lists, for every location movement and completed shipment, the operator, product, batch, and order or fulfillment number. The 3D warehouse cannot be narrowed to one merchant, so before sharing a screenshot, a recording or the details with a merchant, make sure no other merchant's products or orders are on screen.
- The heatmap cannot restore past layouts: when a period spans a layout change, picks are always drawn at the locations' current positions; see What Is Counted.
💡 Tip: When comparing before and after re-slotting, use two periods of the same length and the same view (both for the whole warehouse, or both for the same merchant). Shades are recalculated from each period's own pick counts, so the same dark shade can mean different counts in the two periods — compare the actual ranges and daily averages shown in the legend.
4. Related Features
| Feature | Description | Link |
|---|---|---|
| Picking History | Each pick, one record at a time; use it to see one location's or one product's details | Go |
| Product Affinity Analysis | Find products often shipped together, and use it with the heatmap to decide which products belong in neighbouring bays | Go |
| Shelves | Set each location's row, column and layer so racks can be bound in the layout | Go |