N
Nicolas Méthot
I’m writing to you guys about a feature request I would like to have developed. Basically, we wish to customize the way and the order in which shipping labels are printed, as a way of properly quality checking our shipments. I will explain in more details below.
Right now, we are experiencing a few issues when using Techship as a “bulk fulfillment software”. We load orders from our WMS to Techship, process them, and print them as intended. The result is one packing slip per label being printed in sequence, telling us which shipping label goes with which product. From there, we sort the labels by shipping carrier and by SKU. We then pick the items (by carrier) and stick the shipping labels on them.
This process works fine but we are experiencing a few issues with quality control. These include:
1. Shipments getting booked on Techship, but not printing. It is hard to notice which ones have not printed, as the Print Client sometimes tells us that the label status is ‘Printed’, but we can’t find it. On the contrary, sometimes the Print Client tells is that the label status is ‘Failed’, but it is printed. This makes us unable to truly know which labels have been printed and often, clients reach out after a few days, with no update on any of their tracking numbers, meaning that the order has been booked on Techship, but never printed and never shipped.
2. The picking process during bulk fulfillment is manual and prone to mistakes. When we have a lot of labels printed, it is easy to confuse a label, even with the packing slips attached. We often have clients reaching out to tell us that they received the wrong item. I believe this is due to having a lot of labels easily mixed.
In light of these issues, I have come up with a potential solution that could be implemented on Techship. This would benefit my business, but also other clients that do bulk fulfillment using your software. The workflow would be slightly changed, but I do not believe that the development of said feature would require an extensive project.
Here it goes:
1. We would process orders as usual : Load the shippable orders in Techship and rate-shop them.
2. The difference would be that we do not wish to print everything at once. Instead, once orders are processed, we would have access to a Master Pick List.
3. This pick list would include information of the orders in the batch such as : Shipping Carrier, SKU and SKU quantity. This information is already available in Techship, I simply wish to have it sorted in a different fashion and broken down by tracking number and SKU rather than by order
4. Here is an example table of a fictive Master Pick list of 6 orders shipped through 2 different carriers :
Selected Order Reference Number Shipping Carrier Service Tracking Number Item Description SKU Quantity Status Print Status
Y 37850 FEDEX (F) FedEx Ground 8429236574 Black Magnetic Bike SEM-BL 1 OK Not Printed
Y 37850 FEDEX (F) FedEx Ground 6287267984 Dumbbell 20lb DB-20 1 OK Not Printed
Y 37850 FEDEX (F) FedEx Ground 9842984989 Dumbbell 20lb DB-20 1 OK Not Printed
Y 37851 UPS (F) UPS Standard 1Z98426984698 Elastic Bands REB-03 1 OK Not Printed
Y 37851 UPS (F) UPS Standard 1Z68294849849 Black Magnetic Bike SEM-BL 1 OK Not Printed
Y 37851 UPS (F) UPS Standard 1Z68746984949 Elastic Bands REB-03 1 OK Not Printed
Y 37851 UPS (F) UPS Standard 1Z61894984189 Workout Bench BCH-01 1 OK Not Printed
Y 37852 FEDEX (F) FedEx Ground 9482484984 Workout Bench BCH-01 1 OK Not Printed
Y 37852 FEDEX (F) FedEx Ground 9984294464 Dumbbell 20lb DB-20 1 OK Not Printed
Y 37852 FEDEX (F) FedEx Ground 9682498498 Dumbbell 20lb DB-20 1 OK Not Printed
Y 37852 FEDEX (F) FedEx Ground 9498492849 Elastic Bands REB-03 1 OK Not Printed
Y 37853 FEDEX (F) FedEx Ground 6876874684 Elastic Bands REB-03 1 OK Not Printed
Y 37853 FEDEX (F) FedEx Ground 9849842494 Black Magnetic Bike SEM-BL 1 OK Not Printed
Y 37854 UPS (F) UPS Standard 1Z4982492829 Elastic Bands REB-03 1 OK Not Printed
Y 37854 UPS (F) UPS Standard 1Z9841984941 Dumbbell 20lb DB-20 1 OK Not Printed
Y 37854 UPS (F) UPS Standard 1Z9898494249 Dumbbell 20lb DB-20 1 OK Not Printed
Y 37854 UPS (F) UPS Standard 1Z9849249849 Workout Bench BCH-01 OK Not Printed
Y 37855 UPS (F) UPS Standard 1Z9898429484 Black Magnetic Bike SEM-BL OK Not Printed
5. This table would then be customizable with filter and sorting features. We would like to consolidate the SKUs by carrier. We would then have a table looking similar to this :
Selected Order Reference Number Shipping Carrier Service Tracking Number Item Description SKU Quantity Status Print Status
Y 37852 FEDEX (F) FedEx Ground 9482484984 Workout Bench BCH-01 1 OK Not Printed
Y 37850 FEDEX (F) FedEx Ground 6287267984 Dumbbell 20lb DB-20 1 OK Not Printed
Y 37850 FEDEX (F) FedEx Ground 9842984989 Dumbbell 20lb DB-20 1 OK Not Printed
Y 37852 FEDEX (F) FedEx Ground 9984294464 Dumbbell 20lb DB-20 1 OK Not Printed
Y 37852 FEDEX (F) FedEx Ground 9682498498 Dumbbell 20lb DB-20 1 OK Not Printed
Y 37852 FEDEX (F) FedEx Ground 9498492849 Elastic Bands REB-03 1 OK Not Printed
Y 37853 FEDEX (F) FedEx Ground 6876874684 Elastic Bands REB-03 1 OK Not Printed
Y 37850 FEDEX (F) FedEx Ground 8429236574 Black Magnetic Bike SEM-BL 1 OK Not Printed
Y 37853 FEDEX (F) FedEx Ground 9849842494 Black Magnetic Bike SEM-BL 1 OK Not Printed
Y 37851 UPS (F) UPS Standard 1Z61894984189 Workout Bench BCH-01 1 OK Not Printed
Y 37854 UPS (F) UPS Standard 1Z9849249849 Workout Bench BCH-01 1 OK Not Printed
Y 37854 UPS (F) UPS Standard 1Z9841984941 Dumbbell 20lb DB-20 1 OK Not Printed
Y 37854 UPS (F) UPS Standard 1Z9898494249 Dumbbell 20lb DB-20 1 OK Not Printed
Y 37851 UPS (F) UPS Standard 1Z98426984698 Elastic Bands REB-03 1 OK Not Printed
Y 37851 UPS (F) UPS Standard 1Z68746984949 Elastic Bands REB-03 1 OK Not Printed
Y 37854 UPS (F) UPS Standard 1Z4982492829 Elastic Bands REB-03 1 OK Not Printed
Y 37851 UPS (F) UPS Standard 1Z68294849849 Black Magnetic Bike SEM-BL 1 OK Not Printed
Y 37855 UPS (F) UPS Standard 1Z9898429484 Black Magnetic Bike SEM-BL 1 OK Not Printed
As we can see, the list is now filtered by carrier and by SKU.
6. We would then like to have the ability of consolidating the SKUs of each carrier. We would obtain a table looking like the following:
As we can see, the list is now sorted by carrier, and the SKUs are consolidated to tell us the quantity of each SKU by carrier that will need to be picked.
7. The picker’s workflow would now be the following: The picker looks at the list of items to pick by carrier, and picks the items. The picker comes back to the packing station, he selects the SKU picked and then prints the labels, by carrier, for the individual SKU they have picked by clicking the
Action button to Print
. Once printed, the “Print status” changes to Printed. This status change lets the picker know what has been printed. Once the products have been labeled, the picker then checks the box in the row “Labeled”.
This new feature would allow us to have a sort of quality check when preparing the orders.
• Rather than having piles of hundreds of labels, without a master packing list, all messy and easily mixed, the labels would be printed as the picking happens.
• It would allow the picker to easily know when a label does not print, as the count of items picked and the count of labels would not match.
• It would be much easier to know how many items to pick, instead of physically counting the labels, which is time consuming and prone to errors.
• We would save on all the labels of packing lists, which get printed after every shipping label (at the moment).
Created by Angelika