Find your way around Storage Inventory in SmartMoving and learn how a customer's belongings move into, through, and out of a storage account.
Available to accounts using SmartMoving Storage. Office tasks require the admin role.
Crew complete warehouse and move-out checks in the SmartMoving Crew App.
What You'll Find in Storage Inventory
Storage Inventory tracks every item you hold for a customer, from the day it enters your warehouse to the day it leaves. This guide introduces each stage of that journey and links a short video for it:
Storage Item Statuses
Every item in Storage Inventory carries a status, shown as a color-coded badge that updates automatically as the item moves through your warehouse. The customer sees the same status on their items in the storage portal.
Status | Badge color | What it means |
In Storage | Blue | The item is in your warehouse. |
Requested | Orange | The customer has asked to move it out from the storage portal. |
Scheduled | Gray | The move-out is approved and scheduled. |
In Transit | Purple | The item is on the outbound truck. Delivery jobs only. |
Released | Green | The item has left the warehouse. This is the final status. |
For the full lifecycle and what triggers each change, see Understanding Storage Inventory Item Statuses.
Getting Items into Storage
A customer's items enter a storage account two ways in Storage Inventory. They arrive automatically when your crew completes a Warehouse Check in the Crew App, or the office adds them by hand with Import Items on the account's Inventory tab. Both pull from a completed descriptive inventory, and both skip any item already in the account, so nothing is duplicated.
Note: Create and link the storage account to the customer before the crew finalizes the Warehouse Check. If the check is finalized first, the items do not load automatically, and the office imports them later instead.
Watch: Getting Items into a Storage Account.
Watch (Crew App): Completing a Warehouse Check to Load Items into Storage.
Key articles in this section:
Managing Your Storage Inventory
The Inventory tab on a storage account is where you keep a customer's stored items accurate day to day. From this one tab in Storage Inventory you can:
Find items by name, description, container number, or location, and narrow results with quick filters or Advanced Filters
Switch between list view and gallery view
Open any item for its Details, Photos, and Activity Log
Assign items to containers and move them between containers
Record warehouse damage, mark items as oversized, and add notes and tags
Remove an item from inventory when it no longer belongs on the account
Watch: Managing Items in the Warehouse.
š” SmartTip: Notes you add to an item appear to both your team and the customer in their storage portal, so keep them clear and customer-appropriate.
Key articles in this section:
Moving Items Out of Storage
A move-out releases a customer's stored items back to them. In Storage Inventory it begins one of two ways: the customer submits a request from the storage portal, or your office starts it from the account's Inventory tab. Either way it becomes a storage outbound opportunity, and the selected items, their room assignments, photos, and storage notes carry onto the new opportunity automatically.
Your crew then releases the items with outbound checks in the Crew App.
For a delivery, the crew runs a Warehouse Cross-Reference check at the warehouse, which moves items to In Transit, then a Shipper Destination check at the customer, which moves them to Released.
For a customer pickup, a single check at the warehouse releases the items. SmartMoving generates a Warehouse Release document that lists the items leaving storage with their condition at check-in.
Watch: Fulfilling a Move-Out.
Watch (Crew App): Releasing Items from Storage on a Move-Out
Key articles in this section:
The Customer Storage Portal
The storage portal is the branded, self-service site where your storage customers view and manage their own items. Knowing what they see makes it easy to guide them. In the portal, a customer can view every item in their account with its photo, status, damages, notes, and date entered storage, switch between list and gallery view, search and filter, and open any item for its details and photos. A customer cannot see the warehouse location, container, or zone. Customers can also request a delivery or pickup and track each request by status, which lands in your office as a release request to fulfill.
Watch: The Customer Storage Portal
š” SmartTip: The item-level activity log in the portal is optional and off by default. To let customers see an item's history, go to Settings, then Customer Portal, then Common, and turn on Show Item-Level Activity Log in the Storage card.
Key articles in this section:
Best Practices
Create and link the storage account before the crew finalizes the Warehouse Check, so items load automatically.
Use Import Items when a customer is storing only part of a shipment, then choose Select specific items.
Keep item notes clear and customer-appropriate, since they appear in the customer's storage portal.
Decide whether to show the item-level activity log to customers before turning it on.
Start a move-out from the Inventory tab when there is no customer request, so the items still carry over automatically.