3PL Daily Checks

Purpose
This procedure is a guide on how to manage order and returns through your 3PL integration.
It is recommended that these checks are completed daily.
Overview
The following checks need to be completed to ensure that all purchase orders, transfers, sales orders and returns are processed.
- Order sending
- Order confirmations
- Short shipments
- Purchase order and transfer confirmations
- Return confirmations
Order sending
When an online order is placed a request will automatically be sent to the 3PL based on your agreed schedule. Only orders which are active, allocated and not on hold will be sent.

You can check if an order has been sent in the dispatch module.

In the dispatch module you can use the following criteria to search for your online orders which are to ship from your 3PL.

The sent to 3PL field will show you when the request was sent.

If you have a query for a specific order this can be checked here or directly in the sales order.

You can also search for orders that have NOT been sent to the 3PL.

If you have orders that you believe should have been sent to the 3PL but it have not been or if you wish to resend orders you can select the orders and then send to the 3PL using this option.

You will then be presented with this pop up.

When yes is selected you will be presented with the following screen where you can force through a resend.

If there is an error when sending a description will be shown here. It will let you know what this issue is and how to resolve this, for example with some integrations orders with no delivery dates can not be sent.

If you are unable to resolve the issue please take a snapshot and share this with help@indigo8-solutions.com

Order confirmation
When your orders have shipped the 3PL will confirm the items shipped, the tracking number and the courier used.

The orders will be packed and invoiced within Indigo8 according to your agreed schedule, this is typically every 2 hours daiy between 6:30am and 9:30pm.

It is possible to schedule an email notification to provide details of the orders that have been processed and to flag any orders with issues. The notification will look like this and the recipients can be updated by our helpdesk team.

The email breaks down any STD orders that require processing and any online orders that have been processed as well as any that have been unsuccesful.

For unsuccessful orders the first step is to check the order on the dispatch tab and then to open the 3PL Integration.

From here you will be able to check the status of the order. The most common reasons for unsuccesul order processing are:

The order has been changed since it was sent to the 3PL, this can be checked in the sales order logs and if this is the case you must reach out to your 3PL to check that the correct items have been shipped.
The order has already been invoiced – In this case you need to remove the file from the SFTP
The order is cancelled – Please check with your 3PL to confirm if the stock has shipped and if so the order must be invoiced so that your customer can instigate a return.
The order is no longer allocated – If this is the case as shown in the above example you can reallocate the stock and then process the order.

Monitroring the email is important and strongly recommended as it will allow you to stay on top of your daily processing,

It s also suggested that a daily check is carried out on the dispatch tabe to look for any orders that are at your 3PL which have not shipped.

To do this open the dispatch tab and review the oldest orders left on the screen using the following search.

You can use the date here to see what is outstanding and how far back the orders go. In this example the 3PL have not shipped al orders from the 19^th of April, if this date is beyond what you would expect you can check the 3PL integration screen to see if the files have been received and not processed.

If the files are not visible in the integration this must be followed up with your 3PL in the first instance.

Short shipments
There may be times when an order can not be fully packed and shipped by your 3PL, when this happens you may need to fulfil the order from an alternative location or refund the customer.

To search for unfulfilled orders use the following search criteria on the Dispatch tab.

Form here you can select the sales order top open this on the other side of the screen.

The cannot fulfill check box is now flagged and the item which could not ne shipped will be marked as UNABLE TO FULFILL.

As the 3PL have been unable to ship this item it is recommended that your stock levels at the 3PL are adjusted before the order is assigned to a new location or cancelled. The adjustment can be put through within the warehouse module here.

Once the stock has been adjusted you can check to see if the item is available from another location by right clicking on the item and opening up the inventory screen. In this instance I can see that the stock is available elsewhere.

To reassign to the new location select “Add New Shipment” and then drag the item to the new shipment and change the warehouse to the new shipping location.

The final steps are to ensure the delivery dates are completed, allocate the stock and then generate the SO before removing the Cannot Fulfill flag.

For orders where no stock is available elsewhere you can repeat the above process of creating a new shipment for the unable to fulfill item but as this stock cannot be fulfilled the second shipment must be marked as cancelled and a refund completed in Shopify. This is the recommended process but your internal process may differ, please check this with your manager.

Purchase order and transfer confirmations

Once a purchase order has been received at the 3PL they will send a shipping confirmation file. It is worthwhile checking this daily to ensure that all stock that should be booked in has been booked in.

The confirmation files can be viewed by opening ‘Unverfied deliveries’ and then selecting ‘Check 3PL qty’.

This will open the following pop up. This displays open purchase orders where a file has been received, the initial PO quantity and the quantity received at the 3PL.

When ‘Import 3PL Qty’ is selected the to be received quantities against the PO will be populated. The stock may then be checked into inventory. Please note that pre-orders must be checked in manually.

It is important that this screen is checked daily and that any purchase orders and transfers that have already been received are removed using this button.

Return confirmations
Return orders will be closed daily. This is typically at 9am or at 1pm.

An email notification is sent to confirm the returns which have been closed. To add of remove recipients from this email please contact help@indigo8-solutions.com.

This will confirm all orders that have been processed,

Any returns that have been processed will be listed as successfully verified.

Unsuccessful returns will also be listed here.

The most common reasons for unsuccessful returns are:

The return is already closed – These can be investigated by opening up the return and checking that the credit has been processed.

The return file has an error – If you have already checked the return status but can see that the confirmation has been received here, please contact help@indigo8-solutions after you have checked to see if the return is already closed.