The Shipping functional area in practice

There are two aspects of application in the Shipping functional area:

  • For shipments that have a Staged, Printable or Shipped status, you can print new labels, print changed labels, and reprint labels.
  • The shippers for which all included shipments have been sent are set to the Shipped status. For these shippers, you can print a waybill or an EDI waybill and publish an ASN.

The starting point is a shipment in the ERP system. Depending on the connected ERP system, a shipment can have the Staged, Printable or the Shipped status. The Staged status is a preliminary status. For shipments with this status, you can only print labels and create a pro forma shipper. The Shipping area can receive updated information about staged shipments over hours or days.

The shipment status for a shipper can be set to Printable to allow shipping documents to be printed before the shipment is confirmed, or in other words before the shipment status is Shipped. In addition, shipping documents can be reprinted if there is an update in any of these attributes:

  • Customer Party
  • ShipFrom Party
  • ShipTo Party
  • Total number of containers
  • Total weight of shipment (Gross / Net)
  • Total number of shipment lines
  • Carrier Party (ID / Address / SCAC)
  • EDI Plant / EDI ShipTo
  • Transportation Method
  • External Supplier Number
  • Shipment Date
  • Expected Delivery date
  • Carrier-Pro Number
  • License-Plate Number
  • Seal Number
  • Delivery Terms
  • Shipment lines:
    • Items (customer- and ERP part numbers)
    • Shipped quantity
    • Engineering change level
    • Lot Numbers
    • Consumption Point
    • Customer Storage Location
  • Containers: Customer container part numbers

When the shipment status is Shipped, the shipment can no longer be edited in the ERP system. The Fixed information is sent to the Shipping area through the Shipment BOD.

After the logistics process finishes in the ERP system, a CarrierRoute BOD is sent to the Shipping area by the ERP system. The Shipping area generates a shipper based on this information.

Note the difference between shipment/pro forma shipper and shipper.

A pro forma shipper is a temporary shipper, which is created with each contained shipment and deleted when the actual shipper is available.

The Shipping area creates a shipper only when it receives a CarrierRoute BOD from the connected ERP system. Otherwise, a pro forma shipper is created for the incoming shipment.