Table of Contents

Deliveries (ASNs, RMAs, etc.)

Colin Updated by Colin

ShipStream implements multiple types of entities related to receiving inventory using a common entity type known as a Delivery. These entities are:

  • ASNs - Advanced Shipping Notifications
  • RMAs - Return Merchandise Authorizations
  • Other Deliveries - Any other user-created delivery that isn't an ASN or RMA
  • Cancellations - Inventory that was picked and needs to be re-stocked
  • Work Order Outputs - The result of a Work Order that needs to be re-stocked

These deliveries can all be managed under the Receiving menu in ShipStream. They also all use the same API methods under the "delivery" namespace. However, there are a few notable differences in how these different types are processed.

Workflow

The delivery workflow is Accepting, Processing, Put-Away and Commit. The Cancellation and Work Order Output types skip the Accepting and Processing steps.

New

Accepting

Processing

Put-Away

Commit

ASN

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

RMA

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Other Delivery

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Cancellation

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Work Order Output

No

No

No

Yes

Yes

New

A delivery which has just been created and not yet accepted is in the "New" status.

Accepting

Accepting a delivery involves identifying the delivery that corresponds to the physical shipment received and recording some basic information about the delivery.

  • Number of containers
  • The type and weight of each container
  • The date received

Upon completion of the above steps the status will advance to either "Accepted" if the delivery is empty and waiting for line items to be added, or "Ready To Process".

Processing

Processing a delivery involves verifying that what was received matches what was expected or else recording Exceptions with details about the discrepancies. These exceptions are either Shortages or Overages and denote items that are missing or damaged from the delivery, or items that were received but not expected to be received.

Processing Exception / Processed

Upon completion of the Processing step the status will advance to either "Processed" if there were no exceptions recorded or "Processing Exception". In the latter case the exceptions must all be either accepted or rejected and then when a user clicks "Finish Processing" the status will finally advance to "Processed".

Put-Away

The Put-Away process is relocating the inventory from the receiving stage to shelf locations.

Commit

The final step is one that can be performed automatically or manually by a user, but it is what takes the inventory from being in "Put-Away" status to "Available". When the inventory is committed it will be automatically allocated to existing backorders and made available for new orders. Before it is committed the inventory that was put-away is not available for sale, which may be desirable, for example to give the merchant an opportunity to update their pricing before the inventory is made available for sale.

Status Diagram

The following diagram shows the complete progression through each status excluding Cancel/Void.

Accepting
Accepting
Yes
Yes
No
No
Has items defined?
Has items defin...
Ready to Process
Ready to Process
User defines expected items
User defines expected items
Accepted
Accepted
Processing
Processing
No
No
Yes
Yes
Has exceptions?
Has exceptions?
User resolves exceptions
User resolves exceptions
Processing Exception
Processing Exception
Processed
Processed
Putting Away
Putting Away
Commit
Commit
Put-Away
Put-Away
No
No
Yes
Yes
Auto-commit?
Auto-commit?
New
New
Complete
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