The shipment procedure

The shipment procedure comprises the activities that you must perform in LN to ship goods that were issued from the warehouse by means of the outbound procedure.

You are not required to include non-mandatory activities in your warehousing procedures. In addition, you can specify whether an activity must be performed manually or automatically. For information on how to define warehousing procedures, see Warehousing procedures.

Prepare shipment procedure: adjust loads, shipments, and shipment lines

Before you freeze or confirm the shipments and print the shipment documents, you can, if required, change the item quantities of the shipments and adjust the shipment and load structure.

You can specify quantities that cannot be shipped and create a transfer order to return the not-shipped goods to the storage location or create an automatic adjustment to remove the items from the inventory. For more information, refer to Not-shipped quantities.

While the shipment and loads are still being adjusted, the Open status is not changed.

Step 1. Freeze/Confirm Shipments/Loads

In the Freeze/Confirm Shipments/Loads (whinh4275m000) session, you can freeze and confirm shipment lines, shipments, and loads. Freezing is optional, confirming is mandatory.

Freeze shipments, shipment lines or loads

Freezing shipments, shipment lines, and loads means that major changes are not allowed because they are ready for shipping, but you can print the shipping documents, if printing shipping documents is included in the shipment procedure. For more information, refer to Shipment and load status.

Freezing is optional, you can skip this step if freezing is not part of your business practice. To make freezing a mandatory step in your shipment procedure, select the Freeze Mandatory check box in the Warehousing Order Types (whinh0110m000) session.

To freeze...Use the Freeze command in...
Shipment linesThe Shipment Lines (whinh4131m000) session
ShipmentsThe Shipments (whinh4130m000) session
LoadsThe Loads (whinh4140m000) session

 

To freeze a range of shipment lines, shipments, or loads, use the Freeze/Confirm Shipments/Loads (whinh4275m000) session.

Note

You can only freeze shipment lines, shipments, and loads if the status is Open.

Reopen

If changes are required for any frozen shipment lines, shipments, or loads, you must reopen these shipment lines, shipments, or loads to be able to make these changes. You can only reopen shipment lines that have the Frozen status. To reopen shipment lines, use the Re-open command on the appropriate menu of the Shipment Lines (whinh4131m000) session.

When you reopen a shipment line, the related shipment and load are also reopened. The shipment documents must be printed again, after the final changes to the shipments have been made. The status of the handling units of the shipment and shipment line are changed from Shipment Frozen to Shipment Open. If you again freeze a shipment line or shipment and a handling unit already exists for the shipment or shipment line, the handling unit is regenerated automatically.

Shipment acceptance

To perform source acceptance, you must submit a shipment for acceptance and specify the accepted or not-shipped quantities when the shipment's status is Open. To complete the Source acceptance - procedure, you must freeze the shipment.

If a shipment is submitted for acceptance, the shipment's status is Open, but:

  • You cannot modify the shipment except for the source acceptance fields.
  • No new lines can be added to the shipment.
Confirm shipments, shipment lines or loads

Confirming is mandatory in the shipment procedure. This step entails processing the shipments, shipment lines, and loads generated during the outbound procedure. When the goods are loaded and are leaving the warehouse, you must confirm the shipment and loads. As a result, the status of the shipments and loads changes to Confirmed.

When shipments are set to Confirmed, the status of the related outbound order lines and handling units changes to Shipped.

Note
  • If the Freeze Shipments/Loads activity is performed automatically in the shipment procedure, shipments and loads are automatically confirmed. In that case, you cannot freeze shipment lines, shipments, or loads.
  • If the Freeze/Confirm Shipments/Loads activity is performed automatically, LN confirms the shipment lines, shipments, and loads and prints the shipping documents without enabling you to make any changes to the shipment line quantities or the shipment and load structure.
  • If the shipment documents must be printed automatically, printing is started as soon as the status of the shipment or load changes from Open to Frozen or Confirmed.
Step 2. Print shipping documents

If shipping documents are used in the outbound flow of your warehouse, the shipping documents are printed after the shipment lines, shipments, and loads have reached the Frozen status or the Confirmed status.

The settings of the shipment procedures specified in the Activities by Procedure (whinh0106m000) session determine whether the documents are printed automatically or manually.

Note

If BOD publishing is implemented and LN is integrated with EXM, the shipping documents are printed when the shipments are confirmed.

For individual order types, you can specify that the shipping documents must be printed manually when the shipments are frozen. This facilitates additional checking and adjustment of the shipments prior to confirmation. See Printing shipment documents by external application.