Boosting Warehouse Efficiency: The Impact of Handheld Terminals

Whether you're managing a compact storeroom or a sprawling distribution hub, the tools you choose directly impact efficiency. Handheld terminals provide a powerful solution to manual warehouse management, offering real-time stock updates, streamlined goods receipt processes and enhanced operational precision across your supply chain.

But what does this look like in practice? In this blog, we’ll review how Merlin Business Software from Aptean’s handheld terminal module can help modernise your warehouse operations, backed by real-world insights from our customers Denka UK and Portafix Ltd. These case studies illustrate the tangible improvements handheld terminals bring—from reducing picking errors to enabling real-time stock management—providing a blueprint for how your warehouse could benefit from implementing this technology.

Let’s dive into the core areas where handheld terminals make a measurable difference: order picking accuracy, real-time inventory management, streamlined goods receipt and dispatch, and advanced barcode integration.

Effortless Order Picking and Enhanced Accuracy

When it comes to order picking, precision is everything. Mistakes lead to costly returns, delayed deliveries and unhappy customers—a ripple effect that impacts both your reputation and bottom line. Getting it right doesn’t just avoid costly errors, but drives operational and financial success, too

The handheld terminal module of our warehouse management system (WMS) streamlines picking by offering pre-planned routes based on bin locations, allowing staff to scan barcodes, confirm quantities and manage skipped lines seamlessly.

Pre-planned picking routes help your team find items faster and can prevent warehouse congestion during high-demand periods by strategically assigning bins based on proximity and workload distribution. For instance, when an urgent order comes in, your staff can reroute without delay, leveraging real-time data updates on their handheld devices. This level of flexibility ensures no lag time between the order placement and fulfilment stages, keeping your warehouse agile and responsive—especially during seasonal peaks.

Real-Time Inventory Management: A Single Source of Truth

Effective inventory management serves as your operation’s backbone—a consistent source of truth that drives seamless coordination, proactive stock planning and strategic growth. With visibility into real-time data, your team can respond faster to market changes and enhance supplier collaboration.

In traditional warehouse environments, stock management involves periodic manual checks, which are often time-consuming and prone to error. Teams spend hours walking the warehouse floor, manually logging stock counts and returning to their desks to input the data—often leading to outdated or inaccurate stock levels.

By contrast, using handheld terminals to facilitate real-time inventory management, your team can complete stock takes on the go, enabling instant, accurate updates. This eliminates double handling and ensures that everyone in your organisation—from warehouse staff to upper management—has access to up-to-the-minute data, enabling better decisions and faster responses.

With the handheld terminal module of our WMS you gain powerful tools for managing stock in real time. Features like Auto Stock Checking allow your team to update inventory data directly from the device as they carry out stock takes, while the Snapshot feature allows simultaneous, independent stock takes, ensuring accurate inventory without halting operations.

Your warehouse staff can also scan barcodes directly from their handheld devices to check product details, locations and stock levels in real time. This enables quicker decision-making when locating items or verifying stock availability. Additionally, your staff can log stock adjustments, providing clear reasons for quantity changes directly into the system—eliminating guesswork and improving inventory accuracy across your operations.

Portafix Ltd, a supply chain fasteners, fixings and consumables company, leverages the Snapshot tool to carry out ongoing stock checks without disrupting day-to-day activities. Staff can generate stock takes directly from the handheld devices, inputting counts in real time without returning to fixed workstations or manually logging results later.

Seamless Goods Receipt and Dispatch Processes

Handheld terminals enhance the accuracy and efficiency of goods receipt and dispatch, starting with purchase order processing. Our WMS’s handheld terminalmodule allows your users to input purchase order numbers, scan products, confirm quantities and even print barcodes if needed.

Our WMS software also handles seamless bin transfers, allowing staff to scan items and instantly update their locations within the warehouse—whether transferring products from the goods receipt area to picking bins or reassigning stock to more strategic locations. This flexibility ensures that your warehouse remains well-organised, even during high-demand periods or inventory reshuffling.

From there, the system’s end-to-end traceability strengthens supplier relationships and accelerates throughput—allowing your business to consistently meet deadlines and maintain high customer satisfaction.

Advanced Barcode Integration for Streamlined Operations

According to industry research, manual data entry leads to an average of 1 error per 300 keystrokes, which, over time, can result in significant losses—both in terms of money and efficiency. The costs associated with order discrepancies, incorrect shipments and delayed customer orders can accumulate, causing issues across your entire supply chain.

With handheld terminals, those risks are dramatically reduced, thanks to advanced barcode scanning. Not only does this improve accuracy, but it also provides peace of mind for your team—knowing that the likelihood of critical errors is significantly lower.

Integrating barcode systems can boost productivity by up to 10x while reducing human error to near-zero—significantly better than manual entry. Our WMS handheld terminal functionality excels in supporting popular barcode standards, enabling faster, more accurate picking and inventory management.

The system’s profile-driven approach also enables customisation of user permissions, allowing your warehouse managers to control access based on specific roles. This ensures that team members only have access to the functionalities they need, improving both security and efficiency.

Enhanced Flexibility and Real-Time Data Access

Handheld terminals offer the flexibility to perform tasks from anywhere in your warehouse. Whether it’s stock adjustments, bin transfers or dispatch confirmations, users can carry out these activities directly from their handheld devices.

The handheld terminal module offers real-time updates to the central system, allowing your warehouse teams to maintain accurate records without needing to return to fixed workstations.

For businesses like Denka UK, this flexibility has been key to continued growth. The ability to receive instant updates on stock levels, track goods as they move through the warehouse and manage dispatches with real-time data ensures smoother operations and better decision-making.

Handheld Terminals—The Tools Your Team Needs

Ditch the clipboard and pen— handheld terminals are transforming warehouse operations with enhanced accuracy, efficiency and real-time data access. It’s time for you to embrace this technology to stay agile and competitive.

Merlin Business Software from Aptean’s handheld terminal module embodies this shift towards smarter, faster operations. By streamlining processes like order picking, stock management and goods receipt, it equips your team with the tools needed to maximise productivity.

Denka UK and Portafix Ltd are already seeing results—are you ready to modernise your warehouse operations just like them?

Discover how you can transform your stock and warehouse processes with advanced barcode support and seamless integration across devices. Take the next step—schedule a demo today and see how our WMScan optimise your warehouse for the future.