We have been looking into using the staging feature in customer shipment entry.
Our understanding of this functionality is that you could stage the shipment or shipments, mark then as shipped and so subsequently consume the material from inventory, but the shipments would not be marked ready to invoice until the Submit Shipment Confirm process is run.
This appears not to be the case as soon as we set Ship Confirm it ships the pack and marks it ready for invoice.
Is my understanding of the process correct? If so does anyone have any idea why it may not be working?
If my understanding is wrong, please can someone help clarify what this functionality is supposed to do?
Staging is a way to prepare shipments throughout the day and then mark them all as shipping at one time, when they actually ship, mirroring the actual physical process.
The way I explain staging to companies during implementations: Imagine you ship via UPS, and they only pick up at the end of the day. So, all day long, you create new packs, putting items in a box, printing the pack slip and putting it in the box, seal up the box and print and attach the shipping label. Stage the pack to stage “UPS” and set it in an area for UPS to pickup later. The pack is in status “Staged” not “Shipped” because it has not been shipped yet (and you still own it). Repeat throughout the day for other packs going UPS. When UPS picks up at the end of the day, they take all the packs you put into that UPS area, and you go into Stage Ship Confirm, and confirm for stage “UPS”. The system now marks all those packs as shipped, without you having to go into each individual pack.
I get this, it is a way to process multiple shipments at once, but the understanding I had it that there are 2 stages to this.
You do the ship confirm to mark the stage as shipped and align the inventory appropriately and then you run the Submit Ship Confirm process to mark them ready to invoice.
If this is not the case, what does the Submit Ship Confirm process do?
You don’t mark it shipped when you stage the individual packs, because you have not shipped it yet and you still have it (i.e. it is still in your inventory). When you do Stage Ship Confirm when the packs physically leave, this is what marks the packs as shipped and removes them from inventory.
Can you “pick” the order to relieve it from inventory, even though it would still be in staging/pre-shipped/not-invoiceable status?
I see there’s a menu to UNPICK a sales order… but not sure how you would pick it to begin with (unless that’s hidden in the fulfillment workbench or something).
You would pick the order then add those items to the pack in Customer Shipment Entry, and this removes them from available inventory, although they are in your overall inventory (similar to how issuing raw material parts to a job removes them from inventory on the shelf but you still own them). After adding the items to the pack is when you stage the pack.
Here’s the basic steps/flow:
Physical step to Epicor step
Pull item from shelf = Sales Order Pick List
Get box for shipment = Create pack
Put items in box = Add lines/items to pack (now not available for other orders)
List of items in box = Print pack slip
Tape up box = Close pack
Put shipping label on box = Print shipping label
Put box in UPS area = Stage shipment
Box picked up by UPS = Stage Ship Confirm (marks as shipped, removed from inventory)
If you have a business reason that you want to see that inventory “shipped” sooner, picking (as in Fulfillment Workbench and Material Queue) could remove inventory from your “controlled” warehouse if you are picking to a “shipping” warehouse until it actually gets shipped. At the end of the day a pick is really just a flavor of inventory movement.