STORE OWNER GUIDE / FIRST EDITION

Understand your packing numbers

See what your team has completed, how long recorded stages took and where work waited. Use these numbers alongside what you know about the day.

Start with a reporting period

1. Open Analytics in ToteCue’s administrator menu.
2. Choose a week, month, year or another available period, then apply it.
3. Read the dates and numbers before comparing reports. Dates follow your store’s time zone.

Some versions provide Earlier and Later to browse chart dates and See exact numbers & sample counts for the full report. Open How this is counted when you need more detail. Website examples are illustrative, not measured ToteCue results.

Read completed work

Packages completed counts completed package work. Physical items packed counts the units packed. One order can have several packages, and preparing a package again can add another work cycle.

These totals describe recorded activity. They are not necessarily unique orders or parcels handed to a carrier.

Read stage times

• Picking / packing average: the elapsed time from starting to finishing a recorded stage. Pauses during the stage can be included, so this is not a measure of uninterrupted hands-on work.
• Combined picking and packing time: picking plus packing for matching completed stages of the same work cycle. The wait between them is excluded.

Not every stage contributes a usable timing result. Unfinished work, holds, handoffs or stages running across store-local dates may be excluded. Compare sample counts as well as averages. Picking, packing and combined averages can use different samples; do not add separate averages to calculate a combined number.

Read waiting separately

• Order to picking started: how long the order waited before picking began.
• Ready to pack to packing started: how long ready work waited for a packer.

Waiting includes nights, weekends and closed hours. It is not worker effort or total time to shipment. A long wait can help you spot a backlog, but does not explain the cause by itself.

Understand worker and issue totals

Each stage is credited to the person who confirmed it. A picker and packer can receive credit for different stages of the same package. Use the totals with the work context; timing alone does not rank someone’s efficiency.

Reported issues, received return packages and recorded return damage are separate operational counts. Issues per 100 completed packages is a comparison of activity volume, not the percentage of defective orders or proof that ToteCue caused or prevented a return.

Understand gaps and saved history

A zero is a recorded zero. A dash, blank or gap can mean there is no usable timing or quantity information; it does not mean a task took no time. Compare the written numbers rather than bar heights across different metrics, which can have different scales.

Work waiting right now shows current work even when you choose an earlier reporting period. It is not a snapshot of what was waiting at that past date.

Saved monthly history, where available, contains summaries of the records available for each saved month. It is separate from recent detailed reports and is not complete Shopify sales history. Later corrections may not change a saved month, and missing or removed records cannot be recreated by choosing an older date.

Use a report to investigate

1. Compare completed packages and items over similar periods.
2. Look at elapsed stage times and their sample counts.
3. Review waiting separately and account for closed hours.
4. Ask what changed: order volume, product mix, staffing, interruptions or the way work was handed off.

You are done when you can distinguish completed work, stage time and waiting. The reports help you investigate workload and staffing; they do not automatically forecast staffing or promise a shipping time.

Related tasks

Use order priorities to surface aging work, Picking & packing for daily steps, or contact support about a number you cannot explain.