--- title: How to make packing slips for wholesale bakery deliveries Metadescription: How to create accurate packing slips for wholesale bakery deliveries, and why generating them from confirmed orders prevents mistakes. Display description: A packing slip tells your driver exactly what goes in each crate for each customer. Most wholesale bakeries handwrite them or print a spreadsheet. Both cause errors at the van. author: Dan Edwards author_role: Founder author_url: https://danedwardsdeveloper.com author_linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dan-edwards-developer published: 2026-02-23 updated: 2026-03-11 --- Token estimate: ~1,400 # How to make packing slips for wholesale bakery deliveries By **[Dan Edwards](https://wholesalehandler.com/about)**, Founder. A packing slip is the simplest document in a wholesale bakery. It's a list: customer name, what they ordered, how many of each. That's it. And yet this is where deliveries go wrong. The wrong number of sourdoughs in the wrong crate. A missing item that was on the order but not on the slip. Two customers' orders mixed up because someone misread a handwritten note at 5am in poor light. The packing slip isn't complicated. But getting it wrong is expensive - in wasted product, return trips, and customers who lose trust. ## What a packing slip actually needs For a wholesale bakery, it's short: - Customer name and delivery address - Each product and its quantity - Delivery date - Any special notes (e.g. "leave at side door", "call on arrival") That's the whole document. It doesn't need branding, terms and conditions, or a logo. It needs to be readable by someone loading a van at 5am. ## How most bakeries do it now ### Handwritten lists Look at the orders, write out what goes where, stick the note in the crate. Fast to create but easy to get wrong - especially when writing ten of them before dawn. Handwriting gets messy when you're rushing, quantities get transposed, and if someone else is loading the van, they're interpreting your shorthand. ### Printed spreadsheets A step up. You type the orders into a spreadsheet, print it, and use that as your packing list. More legible, but you're still manually entering every order into the spreadsheet. If an order changed after you printed, the slip is wrong. And you're spending time on data entry that doesn't need to exist. ### Memory Some bakeries don't use packing slips at all. The baker loads the van and just knows that the café gets six sourdoughs and the deli gets twelve baguettes. This works until it doesn't. A sick day, a new hire, a busy morning where you're distracted. The knowledge is in your head, which means it leaves with you. ## Where packing errors actually happen It's rarely a dramatic mistake. It's small things that add up: - **Quantity errors** The order said 15, the slip says 12, the crate has 12. Customer calls mid-morning asking where the other three are - **Mixed-up orders** Two customers ordered similar items. Their crates get swapped. Both are wrong - **Stale information** An order was updated before cutoff but after the slip was written. The old version got packed - **Missing items** A product was on the order but somehow didn't make it onto the packing list. It sits in the bakery while the van drives away Every one of these errors costs you. A return trip to deliver missing items. A credit note for the wrong quantity. Worst of all: a customer who starts double-checking every delivery because they don't trust the count. ## The fix is boring Packing slips shouldn't be created. They should be generated. If your orders are already in a system, the packing slip is just a different view of the same data. Customer A ordered six sourdoughs and four rye. That's the packing slip. No retyping, no handwriting, no room for transcription errors. The slip is always up to date because it's pulling from the confirmed order. If the customer changed their order before cutoff, the slip reflects the final version. If the order is locked, the slip matches exactly what was ordered. Print it, put it in the crate, load the van. ## How Wholesale Handler solves this Wholesale Handler generates packing slips directly from confirmed orders. Each delivery date has a clear list of what each customer ordered. Print them, pack to them, deliver. No spreadsheet. No handwriting. No gap between what was ordered and what's on the slip. The packing slip is the order. ## Q&A **Q: What should a bakery packing slip include?** A: A packing slip should include the customer name, each product with its quantity, the delivery date, and any special delivery notes. It needs to reflect the confirmed order, not an earlier version that may have changed. **Q: How do you avoid mistakes on bakery packing slips?** A: The most common mistakes come from handwriting errors, stale information when orders change after the slip is written, and transposed quantities. Generating packing slips directly from confirmed orders eliminates these issues because the slip always reflects the current order. **Q: Is Wholesale Handler suitable for bakeries?** A: Yes. Wholesale Handler is built for small wholesalers with 10-50 regular customers, including bakeries. It includes delivery day scheduling, cutoff times, holiday scheduling, price lists, production schedule views, invoicing, and packing slips.