Introduction to Shipping with Carts
Once orders have been entered or taken from the web, they can be combined together into ship loads. Ship Loads allow you to manage orders as a group. Loads combine multiple orders onto one truck or trailer so the shipment can be managed as a single entity instead of managing each order separately. Tags and invoicing can manage the loads as a group.
The truck or trailer is defined to have a volume and weight capacity. One of the functions of shipping is to generate an alert when a trailer is approaching capacity in weight and/or volume.
Loads can be changed and deleted without affecting the orders that are assigned to the load. A load can be created for one purpose then deleted so another can be created for the actual shipment to the customer. This would be common when material needs to be pulled from one location and transferred to another shipping location for loading on the delivery vehicle.
Loads are used to manage the order fulfillment process. Tags can be printed for loads to minimize the number of times plant material needs to be handled. Routines are available to manage the load all the way to final order changes at delivery and invoicing.
Carts are used to hold material to be delivered to the customer. A cart has a load capacity. Normally carts contain only one customer order or part of an order.
Build Loads
Building loads is the first step in the management of the order fulfillment process. In this example I will build a “pulling load” then print a pick list to manage the material transfer process then reassemble the orders at the shipping location onto the delivery vehicle. Once delivered the delivery load is used to make delivery changes and create invoices. This process is complex and the example is but one of many scenarios where shipping can be used to aid the shipping department.
Load Build Example
In this example the transfer load is a load that holds all the orders that need to be picked for a date or for shipment to an area. It can be all the orders for a day. It can be the orders that will fit onto a transfer truck, or any other useful combination of order properties. Setting the order selection option will help to show those orders that need to be loaded. Once assembled at the shipping location materials can be moved to the delivery truck(s).
Select the Shipping Load Build from the ActiveApplications Reports/Shipping Menu:
Displayed is the initial Shipping Load Build window:
Click Find to display all orders:
OR…
The list of orders can be reduced by adding selection criteria before clicking find:
Click Find to display the reduced set of orders for a single ship date:
Click the orders to include
The Sequence the order was clicked will determine the drop sequence for the truck. Once save is clicked the orders will be part of the load. The next time Shipping Load Build is run the orders will be clearly identified that are already scheduled
Several things to note:
The Capacity and Weight of the Load Number are accumulated as the orders are checked. As a load approaches the maximum capacity for the Trailer Code a message will let you know when the capacity is exceeded. The trailer can be changed or the capacity can be ignored if you know the calculation made by the computer is in error. This tool will get close to the capacity but may not be exact for several reasons.
Once a load is created there are many options now available. If your company has more than one location one useful option is the Transfer Pick List. Continue with this description.
Transfer Pick List
Select this option to display the program:
Setting the many options will produce many important documents from the load information. Selecting the options as shown above will print a Pick List for the above load that has totals by location for all the items that need to be picked. Because Summarized is checked and Level 1 is Location it will total by location. It will not show the total of the items on the detail lines that go into the load. This Pick List works for some situations. Here is the report that prints.
This is the pick list for the CRO location. Because Page Break is checked the next location will print on the next page of the report like this:
This page has the next location and the Total for all locations.
It might be helpful to print a sheet for each order so the material can be moved to the order group. Use the same report. Change the selections to look like this:
Since Page Break is checked and Order Number is the Level 1 Sequence it will print each order on a different page. There are four orders on this load so four pages will print. Page 1/Order 1:
The above order only has one line. The next order has more:
The next order is similar:
The final order is:
These lists can be useful in the order control process.
There are many other reports that may be equally or more helpful. Explore the many options available.
You might look at Shipping Load Packing Slip Print. It may be more helpful
This will print the four orders on this load in a different format:
Notice that these are printed in drop sequence:
It is the same 4 orders. This is the third:
And the fourth drop:
This may be helpful but in your business it may be important to have shipping provide additional information. Some of that information is not obviously available.
Cart calculations
“How can ActiveApplications tell me how many carts I need?” is a question often asked. With a little setup in the inventory records AA can tell you the number of carts you need to deliver the orders on a load.
Here is the math part you may need to know or contact AA support for assistance. It may be possible to assign capacities by inventory size. AA support can frequently assist with a program to perform the volume and weight updates to the database.
If 25 of an item fit onto a cart then each item will have a volume of 4. When 25 are ordered the volume and/or weight should calculate to 100 or One Cart. The formula is #PerCart * X = 100 or X = 100/#PerCart. X is the volume of the load.
If 81 fit onto a cart then X = 100/81 or 1.235. That item has a volume of 1.235.
It should be noted that the ship weight and ship volume can be displayed while ordering. This gives you a good method to estimate how may items can be put on a load. In shipping the trailer capacity is defined and when building a load shipping can let you know when your trailer if full.
In inventory it looks like this:
Notice that in the upper right of the item view the ship volume is set to 20. Five trellis can be put on a cart.
Here are a few more examples:
The highlighted line has 81 of the Iris that will fit onto a cart.
Note: The cart calculation is a method where one cart will be represented by a ship volume of 100. This is necessary because shipping was originally setup for loading trailers that have capacities of 40,000 pounds and a large number of cubes for nursery stock that could be large and B&B. Cart shipments are usually limited in the number of carts. A typical truck hold 20 carts so the volume capacity of that truck is 2000. As your loads reach 2000 you may need to adjust for partial carts or taller than normal items that take up more room than the simple calculation used to create the volumes. Some people use the ship weight to designate taller items. This is possible because unlike nursery stock a trailer is seldom over its weight capacity.
This document is meant to be an introduction to shipping. It does not attempt to cover every aspect of shipping. There are many additional options available in the application that may be of great value to your company shipping process management. Look at the documents each option produces to find out. The options are there because another green industry company requested them. A particular report option might help you out too.
This concludes the Cart adoption description for ActiveApplications Shipping.
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