Using the Shipping Workbench

The Shipping Workbench is a comprehensive tool that provides you with broad control over many shipping and billing functions.  The Workbench is designed to mass-ship and bill order shipments and enables you to perform the following tasks:

·     Request picking documents

·     Confirm many order shipments at once

·     Create bills of lading before or after picking confirmation

·     Add or remove order shipments from bills of lading

·     Consolidate bills of lading

·     Request shipping documents such as packing lists and labels

·     Enter inventory exceptions such as quantity, price , or location changes

·     Bill and ship together or defer billing until after shipping is completed

The Shipping Workbench is flexible and enables you to complete some tasks — confirmation, billing, and printing bills of lading and other paperwork — separately or together.  The End Transaction pop-up window facilitates this process by allowing you to set option flags to Y (yes) to complete these tasks for selected shipments.

Processing Options

The Workbench provides complete visibility over all of your order shipments.  You can list shipments by entering one of the following selection criteria on the Shipping Workbench Prompt screen:

·     Ship-to customer

·     Bill-to customer

·     Order number

·     Order shipment number

·     Load number

·     Bill of lading number

·     Picker batch number

These criteria allow you to display order shipments for the task to be performed.  For instance, you may want to ship a customer's order shipments or remove a shipment from a bill of lading.  In the first case, you would enter the ship-to customer to display the appropriate order shipments.  In the second, you would enter the bill of lading number.  The Prompt screen also allows you to display only order shipments that require bar-coded paperwork by setting the Shipment EDC Flag.  Bar-coded labels for these shipments can be printed separately from nonbarcoded labels needed for other shipments.

Because picking must be performed before goods are shipped, you can use the Workbench to view the shipments that require picking documents.  You then press a command key from the Shipping Workbench Prompt screen to access the Picker Select Request conversation and generate the pickers.

Mass confirmation is a key feature of the Workbench.  To confirm order shipments, choose the shipments on the Shipping Workbench Select screen and set the Confirm Shipments Flag to Y on the End Transaction window.  If you want to confirm all shipments, press the F21-Select All command key and end the transaction.  You can enter inventory exceptions for any shipment before shipping confirmation by entering the appropriate code in the Action Code field for the requested shipment.  Exceptions such as changed quantities or prices can then be entered using the Open Order Shipping Exceptions conversation.

Billing of shipments can be completed along with shipping, or deferred until a later date.  To ship and bill selected order shipments, the Confirm Shipments and Bill Shipments flags must be set to Y on the End Transaction window.  To defer billing, set the Bill Shipments flags to N.  When you defer billing, inventory information is not updated for the warehouse.  You must then use the Open Order Billing conversation to invoice shipments and update inventory.  See the Invoicing heading below for more information about invoices and consolidating invoices.

The Shipping Workbench also enables you to generate shipping documents, which include bills of lading, shipping and packing labels, and packing lists.

You can create, modify, and consolidate bills of lading by selecting shipments, pressing the F8-Create/Edit command key, and entering information on the Shipping Workbench BOL Edit screen.  Labels and packing lists can also be created by setting option flags on the Paperwork window.  You can then print all shipping documents, the bill of lading only, or the other paperwork only by using the End Transaction window.  If business relationships require you to send bills of lading through Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) transactions, the Workbench also allows you to generate EDI transactions for all BOL document formats.  See the Shipping Documents heading below for further information about bills of lading and the other shipping paperwork.