Cold Storage Warehouse Management Designed for Complex Operations
3PL Cold Storage
Footprint® WMS gives multi-client cold storage 3PLs the control and flexibility to manage complex, changing customer and cold chain requirements without adding more workarounds.
Manage FEFO, shelf life, lot traceability, catch weight, temperature zones, customer-specific workflows, and 3PL billing in one cloud-native WMS.
Multi-Client Operations
Powered by Microsoft Azure
Years of WMS Experience
0+Cold Chain & FEFO Controls
Advanced 3PL Billing
Your WMS May Still Work.
That Doesn't Mean It's Keeping Up.
The challenge
The warning signs often appear as workarounds: another spreadsheet, manual process, development request, or customer requirement your WMS can’t easily support.
As those workarounds add up, it becomes harder to onboard customers quickly, maintain service levels, control costs, and take on new business.
Inventory Rules Become Harder to Control
Different customers and products bring different FEFO, shelf-life, lot, status, temperature, and handling requirements..
Customer Requirements Move Outside the WMS
Special labels, reports, rotation rules, and workflows become spreadsheets, manual processes, or development requests when your WMS can’t accommodate them.
New Customers Take Too Long to Onboard
Different workflows, billing rules, integrations, and customer requirements can turn each new account into another development project.
Traceability Gets Harder to Prove
Lot, temperature, hold, and inventory records have to be pulled together manually when a customer, audit, or recall requires them.
Billable Activity Gets Missed
Special handling, blast freezing, relabeling, inspections, and other services aren’t consistently captured as the work happens.
Growth Adds Complexity and Makes Control Harder
New customers, services, facilities, integrations, and automation add complexity faster than your WMS can absorb it.
What to Look for in a Cold Storage WMS
Our solution
A cold storage WMS needs to do more than manage inventory in a temperature-controlled warehouse.
It should help operators control product- and customer-specific inventory rules, maintain traceability, capture billable activity, onboard customers, and adapt as requirements change. That requires capabilities including FEFO and shelf-life management, lot tracking, catch weight, temperature controls, customer-specific workflows, 3PL billing, and integrations.
Keep Every Lot, Shelf-Life Rule, and Temperature Zone Under Control
When inventory rules vary by product and customer, spreadsheets and manual checks create unnecessary risk.
Footprint WMS manages inventory by lot, expiration date, shelf life, status, owner, location, and temperature requirements. Apply FEFO and FIFO rotation, catch-weight handling, customer-specific shelf-life rules, holds, inventory controls, and temperature data captured during warehouse processes.
Maintain control as inventory requirements become more complex.
Make Traceability Part of Every Transaction
If traceability has to be reconstructed when a customer asks, an audit begins, or a recall occurs, the process is already harder than it needs to be.
Footprint WMS maintains inventory history from receiving through storage, movement, picking, and shipping, including lot information, expiration dates, inventory status, temperature information, and audit trails. This makes relevant records easier to access for customer requests, audits, recalls, and applicable FSMA traceability requirements.
Give your team and customers the visibility they need without reconstructing the story after the fact.
Adapt to Customer Requirements Without Another Workaround
When your WMS can't accommodate a customer requirement, the usual answer is another spreadsheet, custom development project, or vendor change request.
Powered by Datex Studio, Footprint WMS gives multi-client operators low-code tools to configure customer- and facility-specific screens, workflows, and rules with less dependence on traditional custom development.
A new customer needs a different workflow, label, report, billing rule, or integration? Adapt the system without turning every requirement into another development project.
Respond faster to customer requirements without giving up operational control.
Capture the Work You're Already Doing
When warehouse execution and billing are disconnected, teams have to reconstruct billable activity after the work has already happened.
Footprint WMS connects warehouse activity with customer-specific billing so services such as special handling, inspections, relabeling, blast freezing, storage, catch-weight processing, and other accessorial activities can be captured as work occurs.
Less manual reconciliation. Better billing capture. More confidence that completed work reaches the invoice.
Give Customers the Visibility They Expect
When customers need inventory or order information, your team shouldn’t have to become the reporting layer between the WMS and the customer.
With the Customer ePortal, customers can securely access inventory, orders, and reporting on demand.
Improve customer visibility without adding calls, emails, and manual reporting for your team.
Build for the Operation You Need Next
Having the space doesn't always mean you can take on the business.
Footprint WMS and Datex Studio help you support new customers, services, facilities, integrations, and automation without continually rebuilding the system around each new requirement.
Say yes to more opportunities without losing operational control.
Case Studies
Valley Cold Storage & Transportation
Proven Results in Complex Cold Storage Operations
Kevin Niemeier
VP of Technology | Nor-Am Cold Storage
Customer Self-Service
The ePortal allows our customers to pull down their own reports and see live inventory. This is extremely helpful and cuts down on a lot of back-and-forth phone calls and emails.
Karen Reece
VP & Co-Founder | Eskimo Cold Storage
Fast Implementation
We had the 3PL WMS up and running in approximately 45 days. Our priority was to provide our customers with the service that they deserve as soon as possible.
Chris Larsen
President and CEO | Castellini
Better Revenue Capture
On top of the basic supply chain problems, we really needed a system that had dynamic pricing components to make sure that we were fully recovering the revenue for those activities.
Integrations
Seamless third-party integrations to keep your entire business connected.
Frequently Asked Questions
About Cold Storage WMS
How does a WMS support multi-client cold storage 3PL operations?
A WMS supports multi-client cold storage operations by keeping each customer’s inventory, workflows, rules, reporting, and billing requirements distinct within one system. It should allow operators to manage customer-specific FEFO rules, shelf-life requirements, labels, access permissions, billing schedules, and integrations without relying on separate processes for every account.
How does a cold storage WMS support 3PL billing?
A cold storage WMS connects work performed in the warehouse with customer-specific billing rules. Storage, handling, blast freezing, inspections, relabeling, catch-weight processing, after-hours work, and other accessorial services can be captured as activity occurs, reducing manual reconciliation and the risk of completed work never reaching the invoice.
How does FEFO work in a WMS?
FEFO, or First Expired, First Out, prioritizes eligible inventory according to expiration dates and shelf-life requirements. A WMS applies FEFO rules during allocation and picking so that inventory with the shortest eligible remaining shelf life is selected first, while still accounting for holds, inventory status, customer rules, and other restrictions.
How does a WMS support lot and expiration-date tracking?
A WMS captures lot and expiration information when inventory enters the warehouse and maintains those attributes as products are stored, moved, picked, and shipped. This allows operators to locate affected lots, enforce shelf-life rules, manage inventory holds, and retrieve the movement history required for customer requests, audits, and recalls.
How can a WMS improve food traceability and recall readiness?
A WMS creates transaction-level records connecting inventory with lot numbers, dates, locations, statuses, owners, and warehouse activity. This helps teams identify affected inventory, determine where it moved, place it on hold, and retrieve relevant records for recalls, audits, customer requests, and applicable FSMA traceability requirements.
How does a cold storage WMS support temperature-controlled inventory?
A cold storage WMS manages inventory according to product- and customer-specific temperature requirements, including storage zones, handling rules, inventory status, and movement restrictions. It can also retain temperature data captured during warehouse processes or received from integrated monitoring systems, helping operators connect condition information with the relevant inventory and transactions.
How does a WMS handle catch weight in cold storage?
Catch-weight functionality allows a WMS to manage products in both standard units and actual weight. For example, a case may be tracked as one handling unit while its specific weight is captured for inventory, fulfillment, reporting, and billing. This is especially important for products such as meat, seafood, cheese, and other goods whose weight varies from one unit to another.
How do I know when my cold storage operation has outgrown its WMS?
A WMS does not have to fail for an operation to outgrow it. Common warning signs include increasing reliance on spreadsheets, slower customer onboarding, recurring development requests, manual billing reconciliation, difficult integrations, and customer requirements the system cannot support efficiently.
The underlying issue is often adaptability: the operation continues to change, but every new customer, workflow, service, or integration creates another workaround.
How should a cold storage operator evaluate WMS vendors?
Evaluate vendors based on how well their systems support your customer mix, inventory and traceability requirements, billing structures, workflows, integrations, reporting, implementation needs, and future growth. A standard feature checklist will not show how easily the WMS can accommodate the operational differences between customers, products, and facilities.
Implementation timelines vary depending on the number of facilities, integrations, customer requirements, and overall operational complexity. Datex follows a structured implementation methodology with defined phases and sprint-based delivery, guiding teams from planning and configuration through testing, go-live, and transition to support.
The goal is to minimize disruption while helping your operation realize value as quickly as possible.