The shipping functionality is designed to be used to stage items to containers and/or staging areas for shipping to a facility (transfer) or to a customer address. Items shipped are marked as ‘in-transit’ for items that will continue to be tracked and will be received at the destination location. If shipping is the last phase of the tracking items; then the items will be marked as shipped and will be part of historical data.
There are multiple paths for shipping.
Orders
Transfer Orders
Transfer Orders are orders to transfer items between one facility to another facility. Orders support the ability to define what items are to be transferred on an item master level. When using orders, items are then picked using the Order Pick transaction which will then reserve the specific units (setting the status to Picked). When entering an order, the corresponding shipment details can also be defined at the same time.
Customer Orders
Customer Orders are orders to manage the shipping of customer-owned units being tracked in the system. It is a directive to ship existing units to a specified customer address location. The shipment is set up at the same time as the order.
Shipment Templates and Shipment ID
The Shipment ID identifies the group of items being shipped. A Shipment ID can be set up with a corresponding Transfer or Customer Order or can be defined outside of an order infrastructure as part of a Build Shipment.
When using the shipping infrastructure, Shipment templates are defined. The shipment templates support the ability to define what data is captured as part of the shipment (outside of the carrier, expected ship date, and destination details. Different templates can be defined for different types of shipments. For example, a template for shipments that require a Bill of Lading document would need to capture corresponding data associated with a BOL such as Freight Charge Terms and Special Instructions. Another template can be defined for shipments with a Fed Ex or UPS carrier where the only additional data may be a third-party account number.
Shipment IDs can be created and associated with orders or can be created from Build Shipment transaction as an ad-hoc shipment (no formal pick directive from order lines).
Standard fields for a shipment are:
- Expected Ship Date. This date is populated for printing of packing lists and Bill of Lading documents. Therefore, should be updated to the actual ship date just prior to completing the shipping transaction. The Ship Date will use the current date of the shipping transaction.
- Planned Carrier. Define the planned carrier for the shipment. This can be changed up until the shipment is shipped.
Build Shipment
Build Shipment transaction finalizes the items to their assigned containers and/or selected to for shipping.
- Pending shipment IDs can be selected. Units can be added.
- Picked items for an order can be swept automatically to the shipment build or users can interact with each unit for a final pack to a container.
- New shipments can be created. When not associated with an existing order, available units can be added.
- If the shipment destination is associated with a customer team where units tracked are owned by the customer; only the customer-owned units can be selected.
- If the shipment is associated to a specified project, only units allocated to that project OR have no project allocation at all, can be selected.
Pick Order
The Pick Order transaction is only available on the mobile app and is directly associated with the ability to pick for pre-defined order lines setup on either a customer order or a transfer order. When items are picked, they are moved to a staging area and updated with a status of ‘picked’.
Shipping
The shipping transaction completes the final ‘shipment’ action for the units that have been grouped under the Shipment ID. Shipment ID attributes are reviewed, and edits can be completed if needed prior to the final Ship step. Once the Ship step is completed, the Shipment ID and the units that have been grouped under the ID will be either marked as ‘shipped’ or ‘in-transit’.
- Shipped Status. This is the status assigned to shipments associated with Customer Orders. The shipment is the defining endpoint for the tracking of the customer-owned units. If an internal facility destination is not flagged as expecting to receive a transfer, it is treated the same as the customer order and identified as the final destination for the units with no further tracking.
- In-Transit Status. When the shipment is between two internal facilities, the carrier takes custody of the shipment and its units. The destination facility will complete a Receive Transfer transaction to complete the acknowledgement of the receipt and update the custodian to the destination team, destination to the location, and the status to available.