The manufacturing and trading industry is all about processing and preparing products out of the raw materials in-store and further selling them in the consumer market. As the real-time stock movement is directly proportionate to business growth and customer satisfaction, shipping management is an important function as far as trading, or manufacturing kind of industries is concerned.
The shipping management workflow in an organization starts with the onset of shipment of goods by the manufacturing or trading industry to their warehouse locations or to their customers or even when they simply generate the bill of materials to the manufacturing units. But the shipping management gets successfully accomplished only when the on-time delivery of the goods takes place without any hindrance.
An efficient mode of goods shipping and timely tracking of the goods helps in adhering to and maintenance of business standards such as high-quality customer service and maximum operational efficiency with respect to speed and revenue. An efficient shipping and logistics management ensures that the movement of goods takes place on time in a manufacturing or trading industry.
As the shipping workflow is chaotic and challenging in nature, it is better that the organization or business group opt for an effective shipping management module, so that the warehouse operations become smooth and easy to process. An efficient shipping management module can settle down many nerve-breaking tasks in a manufacturing or trading industry.
There are many challenges that any manufacturing or trading industry is concerned about when it comes to shipping activities. The major problems are the lack of streamlined processes to look after the bulk orders, the time delay in product shipments on account of large order volume, wrong estimation of shipment costs, the alarming rate of order returns, etc.
But one can easily overcome the common shipment challenges and streamline them to a proper and structured array of actions if you have an efficient and effective shipment management module in the hold. It helps in streaming the complete order of shipping processes catering to both domestic and international requests, meeting the delivery dates on time, ruling out errors in the shipping processes, efficient controlling of shipping costs, triggering the real-time responses on customer delivery statuses, and also the real-time tracking of product shipments.
Let us see how Odoo/Open ERP functions in the shipping management of manufacturing and trading industries. Odoo/Open ERP’ shipping management module allows the businesses to carry their operations efficiently via managing and organizing their customers and supplier products. Based on the deliveries one can create automatic invoicing in Odoo. It helps businesses to generate packing slips. The packing slip is generated when the sale order is confirmed by the side of the customer.
Depending on the company, Odoo initiates different ways to automate customer invoices. Soon after the salesperson creates the quotation, it is validated and further turned into a sales order. Further, the draft invoices, are created by the Odoo, soon after the retrieval of information like sales orders or contracts. As the name suggests, the designated person can easily validate draft invoices and send the invoices in batch either via regular mail or email.
In Odoo’s shipping management module, a warehouse manager looks for the following information to ship the package.
Firstly, the Packing Slip contains pertinent details such as the name of the product, the quantity of the product, and also the amount of every item under the package and their total. A Packing Slip is generated for every order that is shipped within a batch acting as an indirect invoice to the customer. Odoo also provides with Master Picking Slip where it contains the product description and its location details (row-rack-shelf) of the product being shipped in a batch. This slip is handed over to the warehouse boy who is responsible for looking after the activities in the shipping area.
The delivery method in Odoo
On-time delivery of goods is very important in the shipping management of a business. Odoo handles various delivery methods that allow managing the company transportation to work seamlessly, monitor the shipment cost, and also tracing of the product shipment i.e. destination. As Odoo provides many open-source alternatives one can even integrate Odoo with external shippers for computing the real product pricing and the packaging.
When an order is sent to the shipping department in a trading or manufacturing kind of industry out for delivery, Odoo initiates a one-step delivery operation, where all goods are made available from the warehouse and later shipped in bulk under a single delivery order.
But at times, the situation may differ. In some cases, the company requires more steps before the product shipment. In that case, Odoo triggers for a three-step delivery option (Pick + Pack + Ship). Under the three steps process, the items are first transferred to the packing area, where the items are assembled on the basis of destination and later set to outbound trucks for customer delivery.
For the three-step delivery option, one must assign the routes for managing the delivery orders. Route acts as the path for a product to reach its right destination.
The three-step (PICK+PACK+SHIP) delivery option is initiated by firstly ensuring that the business has sufficient product in stock for pricking.
One can reserve the products if they are available.
Once the product quantity is validated, it can be shipped to the packing zone. After the validation of packing, the shipping step can be completed and can be made out to delivery to the customers.
There are plenty of options in Odoo for configuring the delivery orders.
Firstly you can set the name of the product and delivery provider
Secondly, there is an option to set the pricing or delivery charge for a particular batch of products. The charge can be either fixed or based on rules. If it’s a fixed price, all you need to do is define the particular price in the column provided. If it is based on certain rules, for example: If the delivery is free above a certain price amount, Odoo is encrypted with the option of setting the limit price for offering the free delivery.
Under the price rule of Odoo, one can also set the condition based on either the weight, the volume, the price, or the quantity.
In Odoo, one can also limit the delivery method to a few destinations. The limit can be applied to some countries, states, or even zip codes.
In Odoo Enterprise Edition, the shipping management is much more seamless and least challenging as it allows the retailers to ship and track orders from a single interface. It is provisioned by connecting the manufacturing/inventory store with FedEx, USPS, UPS, and DHL.