07 Apr 2017

Shipment and Dispatch Process Changes

Geoff

07 Apr 2017

Shipment and Dispatch Process Changes

We're making several important changes to dispatch processes and how shipments or dispatch notes behave in Evance. If you're an ecommerce subscriber these changes will affect you.

The single dispatch step from the Order Desk is to be split into a multi-stepped process in an upcoming update next week. However, depending on the size of your team, you may choose to skip some steps.

Generating shipments

In the new process, pushing an order into a Packing or Dispatch state will generate a pending Shipment for each Warehouse associated with the order. The Shipments will appear within the Order immediately and you'll notice they'll be marked as pending.

If your business has a warehouse team who pack and dispatch your goods you should choose the Packing option. Smaller businesses may choose to Dispatch immediately.

Warehouse staff vs administrators

Users within Evance who are assigned to a warehouse will see only the shipments applicable to the warehouse they're assigned to. However, administrators with no warehouse assignment see all shipments.

Shipment steps and statuses

The new process for shipments introduces additional steps to the dispatch process:

pending	The shipment is awaiting someone to pack the goods. Upon opening the Shipment you will be prompted to begin packing.
packing	When a shipment is marked as packing the user is assigned as the packer. The user assigned to pack the shipment may be changed if necessary. The number of items to be shipped will default to the number outstanding from the original order less any already shipped. The packer need only change the quantity per line if the number to be shipped is less than the number requested. The packer may also change the number of boxes in the consignment, shipment weight, courier details and add a tracking reference number. Once a packer has completed this step they may opt to request a Quality Assurance Check.
check	A check may be performed by Quality Assurance to approve or reject the Shipment ready for dispatch. The checker may also edit any area of the shipment. If the checker approves the consignment Evance will check to see whether an invoice needs to be generated or payment taken prior to dispatch. This is applicable to merchants who take payment upon dispatch.
ready	Once approved, a shipment is marked as ready to dispatch. You may then dispatch the shipment at any time.
shipped	When the shipment has been dispatched and email may be sent to the customer and the shipment is marked as shipped. The order's status will be adjusted as appropriate. The status of the order will depend on how many outstanding shipments for the same order are in effect, whether the order was fulfilled or only partially fulfilled.

During the entire process above administrators have access to the Shipment's Dispatch Note as HTML or PDF.

Whilst the changes above are aimed at larger teams it is our hope that the new processes will not be disruptive to smaller teams as users may choose to dispatch from a Shipment with a pending or packing status. Evance will determine whether the approval process is required based on the order.