The online Help implies that the you can use a One Time Ship To address during Packer creation.
Use the Allow One Time Ship To check box to specify if alternate one-time ship to addresses can be entered for this customer account on sales orders, service contracts, service calls, AR invoices and at time of shipment.
I’ve enabled Allow Change Shipping Address in Company Config, and Allow One Time Ship To for the Customer.
But no where in the Customer Shipment entry program is there any place to enter a OTS address.
Is there a way to enter a OTS during Pacer creation? Or must the SO be opened, and the the OTS added there?
It looks like that Allow Change Shipping Address means that you can add a SO release that has a differnt Ship To (or OTS) than the ShipTo specified on the Packer.
So if an 11th hour request came in to ship to a new address (one not currently setup for the customer), the Shipper would have to happen:
Open Customer Entry and add the new ShipTo
Create a new Packer, and select the Cust and ShipTo from above
Manually add lines (can’t use Mass Ship) to the packer, accepting the warnings that the Release Ship To does not match the Packer Ship To.
As you mentioned in the original post, I think the best method would be when the order is being entered and the customer wants the new address, check the OTS box and enter the address on the order’s OTS tab. Then, specify Save As “ShipTo” with the specified ship to ID.
If the customer calls back later, this should be fielded by order personnel where they can change the OTS in order entry any time prior to freighting, I believe.
It is certainly possible to write a customization on the shipment entry screen to update the related order’s OTS and trigger the save as ship ID, but I probably recommend using the standard logic here.
The origin of the problem is that our products are shipped to a job site, whose “address” isn’t usually known until the 11th hour. Sometimes the “address” given, is just a set of GPS co-ordinates. (often a section of pipeline, or an oil well location)
Everything ships by freight carrier, who uses their shipping info (given to them by word of mouth or email) from our Shipping person. So getting the address correct on the packer doesn’t really affect getting the product to the correct location.
But it causes huge problems in accounting during invoicing. Specifically with tax calculations.
Do you know if a shipment type invoice pulls the address for tax calcs from the Packer, or from the SO release?
I’m pretty sure it comes from the order release at the time the AR Invoice is generated, though I have not tested to confirm.
Ironically, the address is not inherently stored on the pack. Updating the order OTS and pulling up a shipped pack will display the updated address information. For example, I can imagine you type in OTS address “down by the GE on East street”. The shipment is packed and as long as it is not immediately invoiced, the OTS on the order should be updated to a proper address with city, state, zip and would be updated if you then decided to generate the invoices.
This matters a lot more if you’re freighting with an address to a carrier because it will use the point in time city/state to create the carrier label, but it sounds like this shouldn’t be an issue for you.
I am making the assumption that by “packer” you’re referring to ShipHead pack using customer shipment entry rather than the masterpack tab using the FFAddress info.
And to compound the issue … One sales order might require several different One Time ShipTo’s. Some parts might be shipped directly to the well head, while others go to a contractor that will install them.
Which makes me wonder, you can have distinct OTS’s on releases, yes?
Off the top of my head the ShipTo for each Release is initially copied from the ShipTo specified on the Order Header.
If the header ShipTo is changed, does it automatically update existing releases with the new headrer ShipTo? Same question for header OTS change.
Which makes me wonder, you can have distinct OTS’s on releases, yes?
Yes. When you create a new pack line, the system will dynamically update the “ship to” to match the OTS address of the order release which you are shipping. If you have separate OTS for each release, it will not let you select multiple releases on the same pack (in case you might do this during the pack process).
If the header ShipTo is changed, does it automatically update existing releases with the new headrer ShipTo? Same question for header OTS change.
If you alter the OTS header, it does not cascadingly update the releases’ OTS addresses. However, if you change the actual customer or pre-defined ship to, it will ask you if you want to cascadingly update the lines/releases. In this event, it will automatically clear your release level OTS flag on the order. The data will still be there, but you’d have to re-check your OTS flag, otherwise, it will use the standard ship to address. Importantly, if you do this type of update, it will not update your pack, which will likely influence the invoicing because the pack is still pointed at the old ShipToNum.
Your process sounds like it works fine (though I have not confirmed this with testing) as long as you are using the release OTS addresses to begin with and then later update them before invoicing. You’ll want to do it this way and save as a new shipto rather than creating the ship to first in customer entry and changing the order rel ship to, because this will not appropriately update the pack info.