Release Order

A release order is the starting signal for outbound fulfillment. When a shipper needs product moved from a warehouse or 3PL facility, they issue a release order that tells the facility which SKUs to pull, in what quantities, how to palletize or pack them, and the destination. It's essentially the shipper saying "this inventory is cleared to ship" – without it, the warehouse won't move product off the shelf.

Release orders typically include the destination address, requested ship date, carrier assignment (if known), PO or sales order references, item-level detail with quantities and lot preferences, and any special instructions like temperature requirements or labeling. In operations where the shipper uses multiple warehouses or 3PLs, release orders also determine which facility fulfills which portion of an order – a decision that can significantly impact freight cost and transit time.

The release order sits at the very beginning of the shipment lifecycle, which means errors here compound downstream. A wrong quantity triggers an OSD (overage, shortage, or damage) dispute at delivery. A missed ship date pushes back the entire transit timeline. A release order sent to the wrong facility means product ships from a suboptimal origin, inflating freight spend. For shippers managing dozens or hundreds of outbound shipments per day, manually creating and transmitting release orders – often by email or portal entry – becomes a bottleneck that delays pickups and creates data entry errors.

Automating release orders so they flow directly from the order management or ERP system into the warehouse – and simultaneously into the TMS for carrier booking – compresses the order-to-ship cycle and eliminates the manual handoff where most mistakes happen.