Object reference error when clicking shipping field on a multi-line packing slip

Epicor ERP 10
1

We have an intermittent but frequent issue with multi line packing slips which I can’t get my head around.

We have one customer where we can have a sales order release linked to many jobs. These jobs may be linked only to this release, or may be linked to other releases or make to stock. Ultimately what physically happens is that a quantity of parts arrives at despatch to fulfil the sales order release.

We create a packing slip, we create the lines linking the sales order release to the various jobs - we ship from the job not from stock. This all completes on screen and we are able to save. However on roughly 10% of occasions when we click the “shipped” field we get the following error “Object reference not set to an instance of an object” and cannot proceed.

The only way we can get around this is to create a packing slip for each line.

This only happens on some multi line packing slips and only seems to happen for one customer - this could be a slight red herring as we only do multi line packing slips for a couple of customers and the customer affected is the one that we do by far the greater the volume of multi line packing slips.

I can see no pattern to this - if I create a brand new sales order and releases and link to jobs all for the same part/customer and try and ship on this basis it works. It works for some orders for this customer part on a multi line packing slip and for other it does not.

We have one bpm to manage printing two part delivery notes automatically when clicking the shipped button - I have turned this off and indeed in test deleted this bpm and still get the same result. Other than that we are using the out of the box functionality.

I’ve looked at everything on the order, job, customer, ship to and part database tables and can see no reason for this to be happening - the database records for orders where it has worked look the same as the ones where it does not work. I’m kind of dubious it being an incomplete field as sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. I have compared the trace logs of doing each line individually versus doing them as a multiple and there does not seem to be any field that is not being populated or significant difference between the two methods.

I have no idea what else I can consider so I was wondering if anyone else has seen this and if so if there is something I am missing or can check. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

We are on E10 version 10.0.700.4 - we have no maintenance so no option to upgrade or get bug fixes. If this is a known bug and/or fixed in a later version - if so I need to tell the end user just to live with this.

2

Nobody has responded so not sure if it is just us.

In case anyone else sees this behaviour something you might want to check - I note from trawling this and other Epicor forums there is some quirkiness to shipping in version 10 and previous versions - if I track what the system is trying to do, it is trying to put a value into the “sellinginventoryship” field for (remain qty- sellingjobshipqty) for the pack line in the shipdtl table - nothing is being entered in inventory fields on the customer shipment screen and we are make to order with nothing booked to stock - it makes no sense why the system is creating an inventory shipment.

3

We are experiencing something very similar to this. If the user creates multiple PackLines with the same Ord/Ln/Rel we get the object reference error as well. Like with you, there seems to be no pattern to the error. Sometimes we’re able to flag the Shipment as Shipped, and other times we’re not. This error seems to have popped out of absolutely nowhere too. The only thing that IS a pattern is we are also on 10.0.700.4.

This version seems to cause all kinds of headaches.

4

Jeremy, I wrote a bpm to try and manage this - I can share if you like.

5

Hello James,
Hope you are doing well in this tough time.
We are having the same problem. Can you please share the BPM you have created ?

Thanks,
Kalpesh