Warehouse Insight can capture all of that information from a single pallet level barcode when the pallet contains one item, reading the item number, batch or lot number, quantity, and unit of measure directly from the scan. For mixed pallets containing multiple items or many serial numbers, the same result is achievable, but it depends on receiving an advance shipping notice from the vendor that tells Business Central what is on that pallet ahead of time.
Single item pallets
When a vendor label covers one item, such as a pallet of a single product with the item number, quantity, lot or batch number, and unit of measure encoded in one barcode, Warehouse Insight reads that entire payload in one scan. There is no need to separately look up the item or manually key in the batch number. As long as the barcode structure is defined during configuration, the scan populates the receiving line and the corresponding item tracking information in Business Central at the same time.
Mixed pallets and the role of an advance shipping notice
A mixed pallet, where ten different items or forty different serial numbers might be stacked together under a single outer label, is a more complex scenario because a single barcode cannot practically encode that much detail. In this situation, the practical path is for the vendor to send an advance shipping notice, commonly called an ASN, ahead of the shipment. The ASN tells Business Central in advance exactly what is supposed to be on that pallet, item by item.
When an ASN is available, scanning the pallet barcode matches it against the expected contents from the ASN and can receive the entire pallet in one action, rather than requiring a warehouse associate to scan every individual item or serial number on that pallet. This significantly reduces receiving time on complex, high volume pallets, since the system already knows what to expect and simply confirms the pallet against that expectation.
Without an ASN in place, a mixed pallet generally needs to be broken down and scanned item by item, or the individual barcodes on the cartons or units within the pallet need to be scanned as they are unpacked, since there is no single source of truth telling Business Central what quantities of which items are on that specific pallet.
Reading damaged or partial barcodes
Separately, if a vendor barcode is unreadable, missing, or the packaging only has printed text rather than a scannable barcode, Warehouse Insight can also read that text directly from the packaging in many cases, capturing the same lot number or item identifier without requiring a barcode to be present at all.