Using Process Shipment Buttons

This topic discusses the primary buttons on the Process Shipment screen. During the process of shipping, only a few buttons are universally used. For quicker, mouse-free processing, certain buttons have been assigned function keys .

Primary Buttons

Ship (F2)

• The Ship (F2) button processes a shipment. Data about the shipment is processed, labels (if configured for this workstation) are printed, data is removed from the display fields, and summary information about the shipment is displayed in the Station Shipping History. If any required information is missing for the carrier defined in the ShipVia field, the process is cancelled and an appropriate error message is displayed. In cases of inadequate information, the data is not removed from the fields. NOTE: The Ship button is disabled when a BestWay is selected as the shipvia for an international shipment.

Rate

• The Rate button shows the cost of the shipment to the user. This information is displayed in the Station Shipping History section of the screen. This function does not ship a package, it merely shows how much the shipment will cost. Required information errors are handled in the same manner as the Ship (F2) function.

Ship to Hold

• The Ship to Hold button moves the shipment information to the holding area (accessed via the Hold button).  This prevents having to re-enter information when resuming the shipment of a package that has been delayed.

Host (F7)

• The Host (F7) button brings up a text entry box to allow shipment information retrieval from a source outside of the WorldLink application, e.g. Microsoft SQL Server or SAP . This is known as a Host Order . There can be up to five text entry fields with any combination of fields used. The number for the text entry fields are configured by your WorldLink administrator. This function returns a single shipment, or potentially, multiple boxes.

Batch

• The Batch button brings up a text entry box to allow shipment information retrieval from a source outside of the WorldLink application, e.g. Microsoft SQL Server or SAP. This differs from the Host (F7) button as the batch button is used to retrieve a collection of Host Orders that are to be processed.

DesktopLink

• The DesktopLink button brings up a text entry box which will allow you to enter the DesktopLink request number. Upon entering the request number, all the fields will be populated with the pertinent information if the request was not stopped by the user in the DesktopLink application. This feature is not available if you are not using the DesktopLink application.

Holds

• The Holds button is used to display all the shipments that have been put on hold. The user is able to select a shipment to retrieve from hold, or to delete the shipment. Shipments retrieved from Hold are displayed on the shipping screen.

Groups (Shipments with Other Shipments Groups)

• The Groups button allows you to manage SWOS Groups that put shipments on hold, as boxes are processed throughout the day for later consolidation. Also, you can either add a SWOS Group even while processing packages, viewing the shipments listed in the SWOS Group that you have put on hold for a specific customer, or selecting the master shipment.

SWOS (Shipments with Other Shipments)

• The SWOS button is used to combine multiple invoices (shipments) into one shipment. This SWOS process can be immediately used for manual shipping processing. However, when using this feature for the automated shipping process (Host Orders or Batch), it is required to have a client script to make this feature work properly.

Details (F9)

• The Details (F9) button brings up an itemization form for the shipment. Typically used for International shipments where customs requires a detailed listing of the contents of the shipment and its' respective value, it can also be used to supply information for reports or as supplementary information when viewing shipments from a box level perspective.

Clear All

• The Clear All button removes data from the shipping data fields. It is used to create a clean slate for the user.

Customers (F8)

• The Customers (F8) button brings up a list of the customers defined for the WorldLink application. Selecting a customer populates the relevant data into the shipping screen data fields in the Ship To Information section of the screen. Missing or erroneous customer information should be brought to the attention of your WorldLink administrator. To narrow the list of customers returned, the user is presented with the Customer Search Criteria Dialog window before being shown the qualified list of customers.

Verify Address

• Select the Verify Address button to verify the ship to address.  The tool used to do the address verification is dependent on the carrier selected as well as your configuration.

Ret. Address

• The Ret. Address button brings up the current return address that is being used for processing shipments for any modifications if needed.

International

• The International button brings up the International Shipments Dialog window associated with shipments going out of US. This button is only activated when the selected country is not the US.   

Email

• The Email button brings up the Email notification window.  Here you can specify three sets of emails by type (Sender, Recipient, User/Additional) and indicate when they should receive an email (when package is shipped, delivered and/or late).  The email that will be sent is determined by the email template setup.  More than one email address can be entered into the text field as long as they are separated by a semi-colon (;).

Select (F12)

• The Select (F12) button brings up the special services window associated to the carrier. Different carriers offer different special services. The special services window contains the services offered by the carrier defined in the ShipVia data field. The services selected appear in the text box below the Select (F12) button. Some common services include Cash on Delivery (COD) and Declared Values.

Secondary buttons

• The button changes the criteria used in ordering the entries in the ShipVia, Bill As or Department drop-down boxes. By clicking on this button, the user can change the ordering to be based off of the textual description or by the code.

• The Lock button takes the weight displayed in the Scale field and moves it into the Manual field, in effect, locking the weight. This can be useful to process packages where the weight may jump a bit due to the speed of the environment.  Select Unlock to unlock the weight.

• The Carton button is used to populate the dimension fields from a pre-configured list. This list is maintained in the Handling Units section of the Support Tables entry in the Setup Menu.

• The Instructions button is used to select predefined shipping and or packing instructions.  For more information, see Special Instructions.