Shipments: picking, packing, and dispatch

A shipment is how you fulfil a sales order in Qoblex. You create a shipment for some or all of the order lines, work it through picking and packing, and then dispatch it when the goods physically leave your warehouse. Dispatching a shipment is the step that reduces your on-hand stock and moves the order toward Ready To Ship and Fulfilled.

You can create more than one shipment for a single order, so partial shipments and split deliveries are fully supported. This article covers creating a shipment, the pick / pack / dispatch stages, selecting batches or serial numbers for tracked items, printing pick lists and packing slips, and cancelling or deleting a shipment.

Before you ship

• The order must be a real sales order, not a Quote. While the order is still a quote, the Shipments card shows Click ‘Create Order’ to create a new order from this quote before you can create shipments. Create the order first.
• The Ship button appears in the order toolbar only when the order is Open and has quantity left to fulfil.
• Allocating stock to the order first is optional but recommended, especially when stock is tight, so that the units you plan to ship are reserved. See Sales order allocations.

Create a shipment

You create a shipment from the order view of the sales workspace.

1. Open the sales order.
2. On the order lines, select the line items you want to ship. Enter the quantity for each selected line if you are not shipping the full amount.
3. In the order toolbar, choose Ship.

Qoblex saves the order, creates a shipment from the lines and quantities you selected, and opens the new shipment page. The Shipments card description states this directly: Create partial or full shipments by choosing items from the order and clicking ‘Ship’.

If you choose Ship without selecting any lines, Qoblex shows Please select one or more line items to pick / pack or dispatch. and does not create a shipment.

The small dropdown next to Ship offers a barcode option. It opens a scanner so you can add the items to ship by scanning their barcodes instead of ticking lines by hand. The scanned quantities become the shipment lines.

The new shipment starts in Draft. Each created shipment is listed in the order’s Shipments card, where you can open it again and see its status.

Shipment header fields

On the shipment page you can set the following before you dispatch. All of these are editable while the shipment is still a draft.

• Ship from location – the warehouse the goods leave from. Defaults to the order’s shipping location.
• Shipping service – the carrier, for example DHL, FedEx, or UPS.
• Shipping method – free text, for example By Air or Pick up.
• Tracking code – the tracking number provided by the carrier.
• Create At – the ship date.
• Received At – the expected delivery date.

Once the shipment is dispatched, an Authorized At date is also shown.

The line table lists each product with its Unit, SKU, Order Quantity, and the To Ship quantity (shown as Out of the fulfillable quantity). If the shipment has no lines, the table shows There is nothing to show here.

Multiple and partial shipments

Ship only the quantity that is ready. Leave the rest on the order and create another shipment for it later. Create separate shipments when goods leave at different times, from different locations, or through different carriers, so that each dispatch has its own picking, packing, and tracking record.

Pick, pack, and dispatch

A shipment moves through three stages. Each stage is a button in the shipment toolbar, and each button disappears once that stage is done.

1. Pick – use this once the goods have been picked from the shelf. Qoblex saves the shipment first. If the shipment contains batch- or serial-tracked items, the batch reservation dialog opens so you can record which batches or serials were picked (see the next section). The shipment then advances to Picked.
2. Pack – use this once the picked goods are packed. The shipment advances to Packed.
3. Dispatch – use this when the goods leave the warehouse. This is the step that commits the outbound stock movement.

Dispatch reduces on-hand stock and is the point where cost of goods is committed for the shipped units. It advances the order’s fulfilment toward Ready To Ship and Fulfilled, and the units count on the Shipments card. Only dispatch when the goods have physically left, or are leaving, the warehouse. If a dispatch was wrong, you cannot simply reduce the order quantity below what was already shipped, use the returns workflow instead. See Returns and refunds.

You do not have to click every stage in turn. Each button is available as long as the shipment has not already reached that state and has not been cancelled, so you can dispatch directly if you do not track picking and packing separately.

After dispatch the shipment shows a green Dispatched status on both the shipment page and the order’s Shipments card. From a dispatched shipment you can also choose Invoice to raise an invoice for the shipped, not-yet-invoiced lines. See Invoices and payments.

Select batches or serial numbers for tracked items

When you pick a shipment that contains batch-tracked or serial-tracked products (including bundles that have a tracked part), Qoblex opens the Receive Batch dialog. You must complete it before the pick can finish, because it records exactly which tracked units are going out.

For each tracked line:

1. Enter the Batch Number (or serial number) in the batch field. As you type, Qoblex suggests matching batches at the ship-from location.
2. Enter the Quantity taken from that batch.
3. The batch’s Expires At date fills in automatically when you pick a suggested batch.
4. Use Add Batch to split a line across more than one batch, so the batch quantities add up to the quantity being shipped.
5. Choose Confirm to save the reservation and continue.

For serial-tracked items, add one entry per physical unit so each dispatched unit keeps its own serial record. For a bundle, provide batch information for each tracked part of the bundle.

The sum of the batch quantities on a line must match the quantity being shipped for that line, otherwise Qoblex blocks the reservation and tells you the batches do not add up to the total.

If a shipment has already been dispatched but the wrong batch was recorded, opening the batch view offers an Edit Shipment option so you can correct the batch details after the fact. Reserving new batches on a dispatched shipment is not allowed, only correcting the recorded ones.

Print pick lists, packing slips, and labels

From an open shipment, use the print menu (the printer icon) in the shipment toolbar:

• Print Pick List – a picking document for that one shipment.
• Print Packing Slip – a packing document for that one shipment.
• Print Shipping Label – shown only when a shipping label already exists for the shipment. Labels are produced by the ShipStation integration, not created here.

You can also print pick lists and packing slips for many orders at once from the sales order list.

1. Open the sales order list (Sales).
2. Select the orders.
3. Choose Bulk Actions, then Pick Lists or Packing Slips.

The Packing Slips dialog describes its scope as Generate Packing Slips for selected picked and/or packed orders. You can also choose to print packing slips for orders that are neither picked nor packed. Tick Include orders that are neither picked nor packed when you also need slips for orders that have not reached those stages. See Bulk sales order actions.

Cancel or delete a shipment

Cancel is available once a shipment is past draft and has not already been cancelled. It stops the shipment from proceeding while keeping its record.

Cancelling asks Are you sure you want to cancel this shipment ? and warns This operation cannot be reverted. You still can ship these items later. The items go back to being available to ship on a new shipment, but the cancellation itself cannot be undone.

Delete removes the shipment entirely. It is only offered while the shipment is still a draft or has no shipped items.

Deleting asks Are you sure you want to delete this shipment? and warns This operation cannot be reverted. If the shipment has already been authorised, Qoblex refuses and shows Cannot delete an authorized goods receipt note – cancel it instead.

If you navigate away from a shipment with unsaved changes, Qoblex asks You have pending changes, if you leave this page you will lose those changes. Do you want to continue?

Troubleshooting