Print, Pick, Pack + Ship

Once you have used the Fulfilment process to generate a goods-out note, you need to take it through the following steps:

1. Print  Print a goods-out note to see what items need to go to the customer and where they are to be delivered. If you are using a 3rd party warehousing or fulfilment system you can also export a CSV version.
2. Pick  Picking is the process of collecting the items from your store room or warehouse. With large quantities of orders it is often useful to print a picking list and gather all items for delivery into a packing area before separating them into individual orders.
3. Pack  Once you have packed up all your deliveries and they are waiting to leave the premises you can mark them as packed.
4. Ship  The final stage is to confirm the items have left your premises. Once you do this the inventory levels are updated; resetting the allocated amount and reducing the in stock levels.

Why so many steps?

The separate steps allow businesses of variying size and with different processes to effectively manage a warehouse and shipping processes. You might not need to use all these steps at the moment, so you can just miss them out, only marking the goods-out note as "shipped" has implications in the system and MUST be carried out. Skipping forward to shipping will automatically mark all the preceding steps as completed.

Each of the steps can only be applied once to prevent sending orders more than once; a warning will be returned if you attempt to duplicate any of the stages. Each step is timestamped when it is marked completed leaving an audit trail.

Can I undo these steps?

Yes. You can undo printing, picking and packing and then you will be able to delete the goods-out note. This allows you to take an order all the way back to before fulfilment. You might need to do this if an order is cancelled at the last minute, was fulfilled by mistake or needs to be amended.

The only step which can't be undone is shipping. Once you have said the items have left your premises you can't reverse it. If it was shipped by mistake you will have to create a sales credit to reverse the order and receive the items back in.

What does shipping do?

A goods-out note might be for shipping items to a customer or for shipping items to one of your other warehouses (inventory transfer). All goods-out notes need to pass through the shipping process (print, pick, pack & ship) in order to reduce the inventory levels and create the necessary accounting to reduce your asset value.

Processing a Goods-out-Note

Each goods-out is displayed with the user friendly Print, Pick, Pack and Ship buttons to allow you to complete the stages on one screen, open the goods-out note by clicking on the reference within the sales order.

Processing Batches of Goods-out Notes

Or you can process multiple goods-out notes from Sales > Goods-out notes > Due to Print / Pick / Pack / Ship.

1. Tick the checkboxes next to the goods-out notes to be processed.
2. Print - Click the Print link to display the goods-out notes, they will open in a new tab ready to be sent to your printer. Close the tab to return to Brightpearl, you'll see that the "printed" option has been selected for you in the batch processing options. Click Submit to timestamp the same selected list of goods-out notes as printed. If you're running a busy warehouse with multiple packing stations, then it's important to mark the goods note as printed as soon as possible after printing, so that the next query for "due to print" does not bring up the same goods-out notes.
3. Pick - Click the Pick link to display a picking list of all the items contained on the goods-out notes, it will open in a new tab ready to be sent to your printer. The consolidated picking list will group everything on the selected goods-notes by item and then by location; if you have the same item stored in multiple locations. Close the tab to return to Brightpearl, you'll see that the "picked" option has been selected for you in the batch processing options. You do not need to click the submit button, the timestamp will update automatically.
4. Pack - Select the Yes radio button to mark the goods-out notes as Packed and click the Submit button to update the timestamp.
5. Ship - Tick the Shipped checkbox and click the Submit button to mark the goods-out notes as shipped. The order shipped status and inventory levels are updated.