Preparing the warehouse for El Buen Fin and December

For many distribution and retail companies in Mexico, the last two months of the year carry a large share of annual orders. El Buen Fin, Mexico's national sales event in mid-November and its counterpart to Black Friday, opens the season, December sustains it and January concentrates the returns. For the warehouse, the outcome of the season depends mainly on preparation in the preceding weeks, not on decisions made in November.

This article proposes a preparation calendar and the calculations to run with your own operation's data.

The dates that set the 2026 calendar

El Buen Fin 2026 runs from Friday, November 13 to Tuesday, November 17, according to the dates announced for its 16th edition (Excélsior). Those five days include Monday, November 16, the third Monday of the month and a mandatory rest day commemorating November 20 under article 74, section VI, of Mexico's Federal Labor Law. Article 75 of the same law regulates who works that day and how it is paid: your HR team should set shifts in advance.

Then come December orders, December 25 (also a mandatory rest day) and January 1. For an e-commerce operation, the first half of January usually brings the year's highest returns volume.

Eight weeks out: measure real capacity

The first figure to obtain is how many order lines the warehouse can pick per hour and per person with its current process. A line is one product on one order, regardless of quantity. It is the figure that best predicts how many people and hours you need.

To get it:

1. Take four normal weeks of recent operation.
2. Divide lines picked by hours worked by the pickers. If your system records the start and end of each pick, the figure comes from there; otherwise, a sample of several days with start and end times recorded is sufficient.
3. Estimate peak lines from last year's sales or your sales team's forecast.
4. Divide peak lines by productivity to get the labor hours needed per day.

An example with assumed figures, just to show the math: a warehouse picks 60 lines per hour per person and expects 9,000 lines a day during El Buen Fin. It needs 150 labor hours a day; with 8 effective hours per shift, 19 pickers. If it has 12 today, the gap is covered with temporary staff, a second shift or both. Repeat the same calculation for receiving and packing, which are often the real bottleneck.

If the productivity figure comes from a vendor's marketing material or another warehouse, the plan starts from an incorrect assumption. Use your own operation's figure.

Six weeks out: stock of the best sellers

A short pick costs more in peak season than at any other time: the order ships incomplete, the customer complains and the picker loses time searching. Before the peak:

• Count A items, the products that account for most issues. A cycle count by location of those products, with a recount of every discrepancy, leaves a reliable record for the period of heaviest use.
• Correct locations with doubtful records. Products in two unrecorded locations, open cases in the aisle and goods not put away are the most common causes of discrepancies.
• Set aside what must not be sold: damaged, expired or under-review goods, in a quarantine location, so they are not picked by mistake.

Avoid a full physical count in November, because it stops operations during the period of highest demand. If the year-end close requires one, schedule it after the peak or do it by zone.

Four weeks out: bring fast movers closer

During the season, a small part of the catalog accounts for most lines: promoted products, bundles and seasonal items. Three decisions cut picker travel:

1. Move those products near packing, in waist-height locations with readable location codes.
2. Set pick faces with a minimum and maximum so product is replenished from reserve before the pick face runs empty. An empty pick face mid-shift stops several people at once.
3. Build bundles or kits ahead of time if your operation assembles them: that work can be done in October, not in peak week.

In Chainlink WMS, guided picking shows each person the location, product, lot and quantity in route order, and replenishment creates the task to refill a pick face when it reaches its minimum.

Three weeks out: temporary staff and equipment

Temporary staff become productive within days when the process does not depend on memorizing the warehouse. The most effective measures are:

• A short procedure per position, one page, with photos of the real warehouse.
• A scan at every step: if the handheld validates location and product, the system stops a new hire who takes the wrong product.
• One user per person. Shared users make it impossible to identify who performed each movement or to investigate an error. In Chainlink each person has their own user and license; at the end of the season, a deactivated person's license is freed for another person.
• Equipment checked: spare handheld batteries, chargers, label printers with enough rolls and a test print at each station.

Note that since 2021 Mexican law restricts staffing agencies from acting as the employer of staff who perform a company's core activity; review the hiring model with labor counsel before the season.

Two weeks out: carriers, cutoffs and priorities

Agree with each carrier on the cutoff time for each day of the season and its pickup capacity. With those times, set order priority: orders for the first pickup are picked first. If your orders arrive by file from the online store or the ERP, Chainlink's bulk upload accepts a priority column (high, normal or low) that picking respects.

Also define in advance how to handle orders that miss the cutoff: ship the next day or notify the customer. It is a commercial decision that should not fall to the warehouse at the end of the day.

During the peak: measure daily, do not change the process

New processes are not tested during the season. The recommended practices are:

• A ten-minute meeting at the start of each shift with three figures from the day before: orders picked, orders pending and short picks.
• Short picks with approval: when a location does not hold the recorded quantity, the picker reports the short and an authorized supervisor decides. An unrecorded short reappears later as an inventory discrepancy.
• Scheduled receipts: suppliers who deliver without an appointment during the peak compete for the dock with outbound shipments.

January: returns need a plan too

January returns arrive in volume and unsorted. Prepare a physical area to receive them, a reason for each one and a disposition rule: back to available stock, to review or written off. Goods restocked without inspection can be sold again in poor condition.

Frequently asked questions

How far ahead should a warehouse prepare for El Buen Fin?

Six to eight weeks. That allows time to measure capacity, count A items, reorganize locations, hire and train temporary staff and agree cutoffs with carriers.

Should we run a full physical count before peak season?

Generally not. It is better to count the best sellers by location and leave the full count for after the peak or do it by zone, because a full count stops operations.

How is the number of pickers needed in peak season calculated?

Divide the order lines you expect per day by the lines one person picks per hour in your warehouse, then divide the result by the effective hours in a shift. Repeat the calculation for receiving and packing.

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