Overview
Once a shipment of products arrives from a supplier, the manifested items need to be accepted and converted to draft products, placed on hold for authentication or rejected so that stores can see what happened to their items.
From there, barcode labels need to be printed and attached to each accepted item so they can be photographed and listed. This guide walks through each step in processing manifests, along with tips on how to manifest if a store cannot do so.
Table of Contents
How to Search for a Manifest
Once the processing team receives a container of products from a supplier, they open it and scan the manifest barcode at the top of the printed manifest sheet into the manifest search bar.
Search via Manifest Barcode
Click on the clipboard icon to get to the Manifest page
Click mouse cursor into “Lookup manifest” search box and scan the Manifest barcode
If you don’t have a barcode scanner, you can manually enter the Manifest ID
How to Sort and Filter the Manifest Overview Page
You can filter results using the column headers on the manifest overview page.
Use the Supplier dropdown to filter manifests to a specific store
Use the Status dropdown to filter results to a specific status
Created: A manifest that has not been received or worked on by e-commerce
Partially Processed: A manifest with one or more items that have not been accepted or rejected or has items placed on hold
Processed: Every item on the manifest has been accounted for and accepted or rejected
How to Understand a Manifest
When you open a manifest upon arrival, the page will show five important points of information.
Below is a screenshot of a manifest, followed by a breakdown of each section.
Manifest Overview
The top of the manifest page shows the following information:
Manifest Barcode ID
Current Manifest Status
Created: A manifest that has not been received or worked on by e-commerce
Partially Processed: A manifest with one or more items on hold or no status
Processed: Every item on the manifest has been accounted for and accepted or rejected
Date manifest created and store name
Total count of items within the manifest
Manifest Item Details
This section shows the names of each item manifested by a store and helps in matching the manifest to the physical items received in the container.
Supplier Notes
This section would appear if the supplier left any notes while creating the manifest. These notes can be handy for stores to communicate extra details that may help sell the products online.
Processor Notes
This section allows the e-commerce processing team to leave notes on the manifest that the supplier can read. This can be handy for providing additional information on items that may have been rejected, combined, or merged.
Event Logs
The bottom right corner of the manifest page shows who created and edited a manifest, along with the users who began and finished processing a manifest.
How to Understand Manifest Statuses
Once a manifest has been received by e-commerce and they begin processing the items, the manifest will update to show the status of each item. The manifest processor can leave notes on the status of a manifest for visibility back to stores.
Manifest Status
Created: Represents a manifest that has been started but may not be ready for transfer to e-commerce
Ready for Pickup: Used by store teams to indicate that the manifest is ready to be shipped to e-commerce for processing
In Transit: Indicates the manifest has been collected by the transportation team and is on the way to e-commerce
Received: Used by e-commerce teams to indicate that the manifest has arrived at the facility
Missing: If a manifest can’t be found, stores, drivers, or e-commerce can mark the manifest as missing to help with loss prevention investigations
In addition, e-commerce can mark individual items as missing from within a manifest
Partially Processed: A manifest received by e-commerce and being inspected
Processed: A manifest that has been fully inspected by e-commerce
Item Status
Accepted: The item was accepted to be sold online
Rejected: The item was rejected. A rejection reason will show next to the item
Hold: The item was received but not yet accepted or rejected. A “hold” reason will show next to the item
How to Accept Manifest Items
After assessing items from a manifest and determining they meet your acceptance criteria to sell online, there are two ways to update items to the “Accepted” status, individually or in bulk.
A draft product will be created if you have the “Automatically Convert on Acceptance” option toggled on in your admin manifest settings. Click here to learn more about this setting.
How to Accept Individual Items
Click the green checkmark in the Review column to accept the item
If the Automatically Convert on Acceptance setting is toggled on, the name will change to a blue link that leads to the draft product page
How to Accept Items in Bulk
Use the left column checkboxes to select multiple items
At the top of the manifest, a set of bulk action options will appear. Click “Accept” to automatically accept all checked items
How to Reject Manifest Items
If an item doesn’t meet your acceptance criteria to sell online, mark the item as rejected to provide valuable feedback to stores on why the item wasn’t accepted.
How to Reject Individual Items
Click the red X icon in the review column to reject the item
Select a reject reason from the dropdown list, or create a new one
How to Reject Items in Bulk
Use the left column checkboxes to select multiple items
At the top of the manifest, a set of bulk action options will appear. Click “Reject”
Create or choose a rejection reason
How to Divide a Manifest Item into Multiple Items
If you want to split a single manifest item into multiple items, you can do so via the bulk action menu at the top of the manifest page. Many e-commerce facilities do this when a store has lotted an item you can sell individually, or where the store didn't manifest the item one by one
Select the checkbox to the left of the item you want to divide
Click “Divide” from the top menu
Enter the number of products to divide into, then click “Save”
Once an item has been divided, new line items will appear on the manifest with a bracketed number at the end of each title. These items can then be processed individually or in bulk.
How to Place a Manifest Item on Hold
Let's say an item comes in that needs to be authenticated before being listed for sale. Typically, high-value items are the ones that need to be authenticated and also the ones the suppliers eagerly wait to arrive. You may already rely on email and phone calls to communicate this to the suppliers, but you should use a hold to acknowledge within the manifest to indicate the reason for the delay.
Adding a hold is just like any other processing action for manifests and can be done per item or in bulk.
How to Hold Individual Items
Click the comment icon in the review column
Enter a reason why the item is being placed on hold
Optional: If you use Authenticate First, click the “Authenticate” button instead of manually selecting a hold reason to put the item on hold. Click here to learn more about Authenticate First in Lister
How to Hold Items in Bulk
Use the left column checkboxes to select multiple items
At the top of the manifest, a set of bulk action options will appear. Click “Hold”
Create or choose a Hold reason
Optional: If you use Authenticate First, click the “Authenticate” button instead of manually selecting a hold reason to put the items on hold
How to Merge Multiple Items into One Product
In some instances, you may want to combine items within a manifest into a single lot.
Use the left column checkboxes to select multiple items to merge
Click “Merge” from the top action menu
Enter a new name for the combined items
Click “Save”
Once merged into one line item, it can be processed individually or in bulk.
💡Operational Tip: When combining items on a manifest, use the processor notes section to leave feedback for the store to let them know the items that items were merged.
How to Undo a Manifest Action
If you need to undo a manifest action, click the undo icon on the line item. If the item was previously accepted, this action will delete any associated draft product that has not yet been listed.
NOTE: If an item was previously placed on hold, you will need to undo the hold action before you can accept or reject the item.
How to Sort Manifest Items
Toggle "sort by status" to find and process items that need your team's attention.
This toggle will organize the manifest items into the following order:
Unprocessed items
Items on hold
Accepted items
Rejected items
How to Use Processor Notes
When processing a manifest, it can be helpful to leave notes on the manifest for store visibility. This section shows any notes left by the processor about the manifest. For example, why an item was merged or divided, placed on hold, etc.
Enter any details in the processor notes section at the bottom of the manifest and click “Add note”
How to Convert Accepted Items to Draft Products
If your Manifest Admin Settings to automatically convert accepted items are turned off, you’ll need to convert items to draft products manually.
How to Convert Individual Items to Drafts
After accepting the item, click the blue arrow in the review column to convert the item to a draft product
How to Convert Items to Drafts in Bulk
Use the left column checkboxes to select multiple items
At the top of the manifest, a set of bulk action options will appear. Click “Convert to products”
How to Print Product Barcodes From a Manifest
Once all manifest items have been accepted, rejected or placed on hold, the last step in the manifest process is to print barcodes for the items that will be listed online.
If you run into problems printing barcodes, please check our troubleshooting help center guides linked here.
💡Operational Tip: Use blue painter's tape to attach barcodes to products to prevent damage to fragile items.
How to Print Individual Product Barcodes
Click the printer icon next to the item to print an individual product barcode.
How to Bulk Print Product Barcodes
Use the left column checkboxes to select multiple items, or click top checkbox to select all items
At the top of the manifest, a set of bulk action options will appear. Hover mouse over “Print barcodes” and click one of the following options:
Print all
Print only accepted
Print only rejected
Print only converted
How to Delete a Manifest
In very rare cases, a manifest may need to be deleted. A common example is if a duplicate manifest for the same items is created. In these instances, admins or custom user roles with access to delete manifests may permanently delete the manifest.
WARNING: This action CANNOT be undone!
Go to the Manifests page by clicking the clipboard icon
Navigate to the manifest you'd like to delete (either search for it in the search box or scroll through the list
Click the trashcan icon on the right of the product you'd like to delete
What To Do if a Store Can’t Manifest
Certain organizations may not have the ability to manifest at the store level due to technical limitations (for example, no internet access) or staffing issues. In this scenario, the e-commerce team has three options for getting items onto manifests.
Option 1: Replicate Store Manifesting
This option entails cataloging all items in a tote container sent from the store and then going through and accepting and rejecting each item accordingly. This option is excellent from a data integrity perspective as it will log all items sent and give stores feedback on what was or was not acceptable for e-commerce. That said, this option can be very time-consuming and may be unattainable for your team.
Option 2: Manifest only Accepted Items (recommended)
In this option, processors would only add the items they are accepting to manifests and then bulk accept and print them. This is more efficient than option 1 and still gives stores some data on what types of items they should send in.
Option 3: Bulk Barcode Generation
If the e-commerce team is really strapped for time and needs to simply get barcodes on products as quickly as possible. You can generate up to 100 product barcodes in under 30 seconds using the method outlined below:
Add a new manifest and select the appropriate supplier
Enter a generic name for the item like "product" or "item"
Save the manifest
Select the item and divide into the number of items you're accepting
Select all items and Accept
Select all items and Print barcodes
Manifest Keyboard Shortcuts
Instead of clicking buttons to process manifest items, you can also enable keyboard shortcuts to reduce the amount of time you need to spend moving your mouse!
Click “More” in the top right of the manifest page
Toggle on “Keyboard shortcuts”
Available Shortcuts:
Ctrl + a = Accept each selected item
Ctrl + r = Reject each selected item
Ctrl + d = Divide each selected item
Ctrl + m = Merge all selected items into one item (must select at least 2 items)
Ctrl + u = Undo processing on each selected item (This will show a confirmation if any item has a draft product)
Related Guides
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