Designing Goods-Out Notes / Delivery Notes

When you fulfil your sales orders a goods-out note is created. This document should accompany the items being shipped and show details of the items and quantity of goods ordered, shipped, and where necessary to follow. Brightpearl has a powerful templating engine that allows you to put anything you like onto the goods-out note. The default template is called the "Packing note" template and can be found at Setup > Templates > System templates.

You can create additional templates, and then assign these templates to a shipping method. When that shipping method is applied to an order the new template will be automatically used. You could use this feature to print 1st class mail goods-out notes with a pre-paid mailing symbol or peel-off label (you will need special paper with labels), and courier goods-out notes with tracking information perhaps, simply by including the detail on the template.

Add/Edit a New Template

1. Go to Setup > Templates > System Templates.
2. To edit a template click the pencil icon.
3. To add a new template click Add a template.
4. Use the links to switch between Visual mode and HTML mode.
5. Create your goods-out note contents.
6. Click Save changes.

Copying Existing Templates

Rather than designing a template from scratch, why not copy one of Brightpearl's standard templates and make it your own?

1. Go to Setup > Templates > System Templates.
2. Click Add a template.
3. Enter a name for your new template.
4. Use the drop-down menu to select a pre-designed template. This will overwrite any work you've already done.
5. The pre-designed template is copied into your new template. Make any changes.
6. Click Save changes.

If you want to copy a template that you have already created yourself, you will need to open it and view it in HTML mode, select all the text and copy it (CTRL+C or Right-click > Copy). Next begin a new template and view in HTML mode, then paste all the text into the blank template (CTRL+V or Right-click > Paste).

Widgets

A widget is a merge field. Inserted into a template it will look something like this:

_orderRef_ or _CustomerName_

When widgets are used the template will auotmatically pull in the relevant data from the record for which you are creating the document. The available widgets are listed in a drop-down menu above the template on the edit screen, place your cursor where you want the widget and select it from the list to add it to your template.

The templates are HTML and CSS, so you can design them however you like.

The following example uses the _orderItems_ widget to display the contents of this particular goods-out note in the "This shipment" column, is relation to other items on the order. You can see that from a total of 6 Compact Microwaves ordered, this goods note contains 3, and 3 are left to be added to another goods note in the future.

The barcode is simply a representation of the packing note, which is what is used over API to reference this particular goods note. The user always sees OrderID/SequenceID, eg 100040/01 is the first goods-out note for order 100040.

Alternatively you can use the _packingProducts_ widget, which only shows the items on this particular goods-out note:

Using the _packingProducts_ widget

This widget can be used for goods-out note templates in order to display all the items from the order that are being shipped. It will behave slightly differently depending on whether you have switched on Partial/Advanced Fulfilment.

If you are NOT using partial fulfilment

Using the _packingProducts_ widget will show all items on the order. Note the reference for this delivery is the same reference as the order itself (100099).

If you ARE using partial fulfilment

The goods-out note may contain only a part of the overall order, so if you're using partial fulfilment we give your customer a bit more information. When the _packingProducts_ widget is used in your template, it also includes "shipped", "this shipment" and "to follow" columns. Note that even non-stock-tracked items are displayed (grayed out in this example). You may well have items like catalogues that you want to put on the sale but don't need to track stock of.

Note that the reference for this delivery is the order reference followed by the sequence ID; a single order may have several goods-out notes as further items are shipped. In this example the goods-out note is the first one raised for this order: 100099/01.

Using the _barcode_ widget

The barcode is placed using the _barcode_ widget, and is simply a representation of the goods-out note reference.

If you want to show the stock location (e.g. A.01.01) on the packing note, then you can switch this on using the settings on the Setup > Products/Inventory > Inventory settings. If shipping 10 items requires that the system pulls stock from two locations, e.g. A.01.01 and B.2.1 then both locations and the quantity required will show on the goods-out note. These locations are selected by the system at the point of fulfilment (not at point of packing), using FIFO:

Using the _productTable_ widget

This widget allows you to insert a table of all products on an order into a document template. This table can be fully customised to include more or less columns and to display different columns depending on which template you are using.