A physical distribution storage system comprises a series of storage racks, a host processing unit and hand-held terminals, the storage racks storing articles and each storage rack having rack information indication means which indicates information concerning the articles stored in the rack. The host processing unit includes a printer which prints in and out lists, indicating articles to be taken in and out, on the print material. Each hand-held terminal includes an input unit which reads the rack information and the in and out lists and updates the in and out lists according to the in and out operations, a data comparator which compares the rack information read by the input unit with the updated in and out lists and a display which displays the comparator results on a respective screen. The in and out lists may be represented by two dimensional bar codes.