Sales Orders (Outbound)
- James Seabrook
Summary
Sales orders are the sales from a Client on White Glove to their end customers.
Warehouse Interaction
Sales orders are firstly sent to the warehouse to instruct the warehouse to pick items, pack them and dispatch them to the chosen destination (usually a Final Mile Hub). The Final Mile Hub (Facility) is from where a White Glove partner picks up the goods and install them to the end customer’s location. Generally Final Mile Facilities are owned by White Glove Partners. The list of them and their addresses is stored in the White Glove system.
Sales orders can be allocated to ASNs or Goods Transfers (inbound bookings) to help the client keep track of stock and where it is allocated to. There is nothing to stop a sales order being sent if the ASN has not been received and put away, however when the ASN hasn’t been received a warning is shown to indicate that that ASN has not been processed.
Rescinding an Order from the Warehouse
A Sales Order can be rescinded from the warehouse at any time. This means that there is an instruction for the picking, packing and dispatch to not go ahead. There are two outcomes to this:
The Sales Order is successfully rescinded because although picking may have started, packing has not, and the items can be returned to the warehouse.
The Sales Order is not rescinded successfully because packing has begun ready for dispatch and the onward journey. This means the warehouse need to be told that the package should be returned to the warehouse and the items inbounded to stock again via an ASN.
In this case it is important to speak to the warehouse first and then manually confirm that the order has been returned.
If the sales order has been returned it could be delayed for sending later in favour of another sales order, or it could be cancelled.
Dispatch from the Warehouse
Once the order has been dispatched, a dispatch notification is sent to the White Glove Application. The booking statuses which are valid for the dispatch notification are
Sales Order Sent (normal practice)
Rescind Pending - Rescinding has bene started but has not yet been completed
New
Pending was rescinded with no effect so the sales order was still processed or
Decision was made that warehouse processing not required. A dispatch notification has to be produced from an external system for the dispatch to be recognised.
Pre-Alert Sent to Final Mile Facility (Hub)
On dispatch an automatic attempt is made to send a Pre-Alert to the contacts defined in the Final Mile Hub as well as cc to the SEKO Logistics email address representing correspondence with the Client.
The email body contains the following:
Goods details
ETA
Packing and delivery information
Customer details
Booking Confirmation link (URL to supplier portal)
Purchase Order
Pre-Alert Send Failure
Pre-Alerts can fail to send because of the following reasons:
Packing information, ETA or Costs have not been added
The addresses are not correct within the Final Mile Hub
General email failure - further sending attempts should succeed)
Booking Confirmation
Booking Confirmations are completed by the White Glove partner in conjunction with the End Customer. This contains all the details about the booking including
Contacts
Addresses
Health and Safety
Information about things like steps, narrow doors etc
Availability of lifts and goods sizes to ensure they fit in
Extra contacts
Additional comments
Completion of Booking Confirmation
On completion of the booking confirmation the addressees in the booking form will be sent an email with a PDF document containing the confirmed details. It will also be sent as cc to the SEKO Logistics email address representing correspondence with the Client. The Booking will be updated to a status of Work Scheduled with the scheduled delivery (or installation) date.
Expiry of Booking Confirmation
After 7 days of sending, or after completion of the form, the link to the booking expires so clicking it will result in a message stating that the Farnborough office needs to be contacted to send another Pre-Alert with a new Booking Confirmation link.
Pre-Alert Resend
Pre-Alerts can be resent at any time until the status of the job is marked as Completed. These can include changes in costs.
Work Completed
Once work has been completed the Life Cycle panel will be ticked manually with either
Completed
Completed with issues
Aborted
In this case, and as long as at the time of setting the Work Complete, the booking status is to “Work Complete”
Send Revised Purchase Order
Once work is complete and if required, another Purchase Order can be sent with Actual Costs.
Set back to Work Scheduled
If all the Work Complete tick boxes are deselected and the status of the booking at the time is “Work Complete”, the status will be set back to Work Scheduled.
FAQs
Sales order will not go through on the White Glove system
When a sales order is sent through to the WMS from White Glove the WMS checks to see if the stock is available at that point in time, no matter what any other dates might be set to. If the stock is not available it will get rejected, and will have to be submitted agin.
Inbound stock must be available. That means it must be confirmed. In the screenshot below, all have been received but not all have been confirmed. If not confirmed it means it has not yet been put away into a location as available stock and is therefore not available to be picked from the warehouse.
The stock report shows stock and its various statuses. If the “Free” column reports zero then any sales order containing this product cannot be sent through successfully. The supposed stock may not have been processed or may already be dispatched on another order. This is to do with stock management for which the client bears some responsibility.
