Carriers are used throughout the Order Management system to allow users to record the delivery methods used on despatches from the warehouse.
You can establish Carriers (or “Couriers”) for external Third-Party companies that are used to deliver your goods to customers or to other warehouse operations. You can also set up Carriers to cover your own internally controlled delivery trucks/vehicles if you want to tag all orders that leave your despatch dock with the method of delivery. You can even establish a carrier for when your customers come to pick-up or collect orders themselves.
Once you have set up Carriers you can start to enter Consignment Details on orders that are processed through the Order Management system. The Customer Service and Accounts Receivable systems all allow the viewing of the Carrier and Consignment details for Orders, Despatch Dockets and Invoices to assist when dealing with the customer.
If a customer has a preferred carrier, you can update the customer record with that carrier and that will be used as their default carrier in Sales Order Entry.
Carrier Interfaces
To get the most efficient service from a carrier you are often asked to interface with their internal software tracking systems. Since each carrier can have different requirements for shipping labels, barcodes, consignment details, manifests, parcel tracking, delivery zones and costings, interfacing with a carrier’s software system is a highly complex and customised task. Contact support if you would like to start a carrier interface implementation project.
Example
You send your metropolitan parcels with ‘Australia Post/Startrack’ and interstate parcels with ‘Parcel Posties’. If you’ve designated the carrier on the order, then this appears on the Picking Docket and the picker (or packer) knows what despatch zone to put the parcel until it is collected by the carrier. When delivery labels are printed these are in the format required by each carrier (since they will each have their own methods for tracking parcels by barcodes and despatch zones).
When using your own delivery vehicles, if you set these up as carriers, you can use the carrier to help manage orders included on delivery runs.
For orders that are being picked up by the customer, you can use a carrier that is flagged as ‘pick-up’ so that the picker/packer know where to place the parcels in the despatch zone ready for customer pick-up.
Minimum Requirements
Use of Carriers is completely optional, so you don’t not have to set up any if you don’t need to.
Changing Established Data
You can add new Carriers and allocate them to Customers at any time. When a Carrier is added to a Customer, any outstanding orders for the customer are NOT automatically updated with the new carrier.
Panel Options
- Standard panel features
- Maintenance
- Views
- Audit – shows an audit trail of the data changes made over time to the carrier currently being viewed
- Where used – shows a list of Customers with the carrier currently being viewed set as the preferred carrier as well as a list of orders waiting delivery by the carrier being viewed.
- Reports
- List Carriers