The sheet that goes on the packing table

What is in it

Two sections, in the order you need them.

First: the total per group

This is what gets read at a glance when the batch lands — how much of each product to bring from the shelf, before any packing starts.

The shape of the totals from a 338-label courier file. Group names are whatever you called them.

Then: every SKU in print order

One row per run of identical labels, with the exact pages it occupies in the sorted PDF. You can work down it in order and know where you are in the stack at all times.

Why the page numbers can be trusted

Both the PDF and the pick list are written by walking the same plan. Neither works out the page numbers for itself, which is the only way to be sure they cannot disagree — including when divider pages are turned on and every span after the first group shifts along.

Small things that matter on a real table

• The longest run first. Inside a group, the SKU with the most labels prints first. Ties fall back to alphabetical, so the same batch always comes out in the same order.
• Multi-piece orders separated. Labels covering more than one piece are gathered at the end, in their own block, so they are never packed on autopilot as singles.
• Ungrouped labels last. Anything not in a group comes after the groups, and anything whose SKU could not be read comes last of all — easy to pull out of the stack by hand.

Common questions

Do the page numbers account for divider pages?

Yes. The pick list is built from the same plan the PDF is written from, so a divider page pushes every span after it along by one. A pick list quoting pages the PDF does not have is worse than no pick list at all.

Will Excel mangle my SKU names?

No. The file is written with a byte order mark, which is what tells Excel on Windows to read it as UTF-8 rather than the system code page. Without it, accented characters in a SKU turn into nonsense.

Why is a group listed twice sometimes?

Because it printed in two runs: its ordinary labels, and its multi-piece orders held back into the block at the end. The totals section adds them together, because the question there is how many you got.