An important part of the Supplier Portal is allowing suppliers identify when orders (whole or partial) are ready for shipment, identifying handling unit makeup, and providing relevant shipment documents.
Release Whole or Partial Order
Suppliers can access all the orders in which they are identified within their Order Dashboard. When an order is ready to be fulfilled suppliers select the order in question.
Suppliers can view detailed information about the order and when ready to fulfill it then they select ‘Ready’.
This will populate an order release modal where suppliers can fill some or all of the order. The supplier identifies the ready to ship date, pickup address, the quantity of items being shipped (whole or part of each order line item), the transportation detail around the items being shipped, and upload any order documents like a packing slip. Once an order is ready then the Shipwell customer is notified and can schedule the shipment. Customers can then ship orders similarly how they do within Shipwell today.
The process identified above is the Supplier Initiated release workflow. Customers can also initiate a release on behalf of a supplier in a similar manner but being logged in as a customer.
Order Visibility
An important part of the Supplier Portal is allowing a shared venue where customers and suppliers have shared order and shipment visibility. As part of this there are automated emails and notifications around order creation, order being identified as ‘Ready’ for being shipped, along with an order being assigned to a carrier.
Customers have access to all of their orders and where they are in the fulfillment process, while suppliers have a similar level of visibility into purchase orders but only the purchase orders that they have access.
Going into the ‘On Shipments’ tab will provide orders that have been placed on a shipment and either are ready to be transported or are being transported.
Create Handling Units Where Mixed Pallets
There are sometimes where a supplier will need to provide mixed pallet information wherein line items or orders are on the same handling unit. Prior to being able to identify the composition of the handling units, suppliers must ready the orders in a manner as above. This is designed in this way because sometimes orders are partially released, and the handling units would only be built off the portion of the order released.
Go to the ‘Ready’ tab on the ‘Orders Dashboard’ and select the order(s) wherein the mixed handling unit is being defined. From the ‘Bulk Actions' dropdown select ‘Create Handling Unit ID(s)’.
This will open up the handling unit builder where you can define the handling units either one-by-one or identify the aggregate handling unit information for all the line items. You add the line items on the left onto the handling unit on the right. It will default as 1 Pallet with dimensions of 48” x 40” x 60” with the total weight of all the line items transferred onto the pallets. You can of course modify any of these configurations of the handling unit and it will not modify the original order line items themselves.
Once complete you press ‘Save’ and you will go back to the Orders Dashboard. Once a shipment is created leveraging orders with handling units identified it will leverage these and present these within the shipment themselves. The presence of a handling unit(s) for an order can be identified via the ‘Handling Unit ID’ column on the orders dashboard.
Having your supplier leverage handling units is completely voluntary but when you have mixed pallets and creating LTL shipments then this is the recommended path or else you might run into dispatch issues if you have more than 10-line-item quantity on a shipment depending on the carrier.
It is important to note the composition of the order from visibility is no different within the order itself but when the order is placed on a shipment it will leverage the defined handling unit information to present the shipment handling unit and will be dispatched in that manner.
The Supplier Collaboration Portal is a separate but integrated offering within Shipwell. If interested in learning more about the Supplier Collaboration Portal, reach out to your Customer Success Manager.