This guide provides a walkthrough and examples of the Ship to Home (STH) fulfillment method and the steps that must be performed to fulfill shipments.
Begin Fulfillment
To get started:
- Go to Main > Fulfiller.
- Locate the shipment you want to fulfill, whether through the search bar or the widgets on the Fulfiller homepage.
- Click Finish Fulfilling Shipment at the bottom of the shipment details.
- If you accessed this shipment's details page directly, such as by clicking a link from the Order Admin, then this button will not be displayed. Instead, the page will already show you the current shipment step.
- If you accessed this shipment's details page directly, such as by clicking a link from the Order Admin, then this button will not be displayed. Instead, the page will already show you the current shipment step.
Cancel Fulfillment
At any point in this process, the shipment can be cancelled by clicking Cancel Shipment from the dropdown actions menu in the top right. If an order has multiple shipments, then canceling one of its shipments does NOT cancel the other shipments nor the order itself. The order will only be canceled in one of two ways: automatically by the system when all of its shipments are canceled first, or manually by an admin or customer service representative through the Admin UI.
See the Order Admin UI documentation for more information about cancellation at the order level.
Accept Shipment
The first step in the STH fulfillment process is Accept Shipment, where you acknowledge the shipment and indicate that it is ready to start fulfillment.
- Review the shipment details.
- Click Yes.
Validate Stock
Stock validation indicates how many of each product you can fulfill.
- In the In Stock column for each shipment, type in the quantity you have in stock.
- Or, if you click inside the field then arrows will appear. Click these to increase or decrease the quantity by one.
- The barcode(s) can also be scanned to be automatically populate this field instead. For more details and configurable scanning options, see the UI overview.
- If any item identifiers are required, then enter those in the appropriate fields.
- During this step, additional fields for item identifiers will be displayed if they are enabled on the shipment items. These are item-level attributes that denote important unique information such as a serial number, manufacturer number, number for a gift card item to load a value to, or other identifying data point.
- There may be multiple identifiers, but if any were flagged as required then you will not be able to proceed until you have provided the required information.
- Item identifiers will only be available if enabled for this item in the Order and Shipment APIs, as the
fulfillmentField
object in the item-level data).
- If you have all of the required quantity in stock, click Proceed to Print Packing Slip. If you have only partial quantity available, refer to the Split the Shipment section. If you have no quantity available, refer to the Reassign the Shipment section.
Barcode Scanners
Scanning capability is available for the Validate Stock step, making it easier to input the quantity you have in stock for that shipment. Both USB plug-in laser and camera scanners are supported, though camera scanners are only available through the mobile fulfiller application and will use the camera of that mobile device.
By default, you can input your laser scan into the text field of the In Stock column in the Validate Stock table. However, you can also implement a "Scan UPC/SKU" text box (shown below, using a BOPIS example) that displays above the table to input your scan results. This is a more straightforward method compared to the default interface, but requires a custom theme change to display the field. In your theme, simply activate the isItemUPCScanAllowed
setting within the language file.
You may also want to reverse the way that the Validate Stock table displays counts when using laser scanning. By default, the In Stock field is populated with the expected count of the order and the fulfiller is expected to decrease this value for any quantity they are rejecting. However, you can instead start the In Stock count at 0 and scan items to increase the value. To enable this behavior, find your ValidateStockQuantity
theme settings and set defaultZeroQuantity
to "1" and set both defaultShipmentQuantity
and locationInventoryQuantity
to "0" as shown below.
"ValidateStockQuantity": { "defaultZeroQuantity": 1, "defaultShipmentQuantity": 0, "locationInventoryQuantity": 0 },
Split the Shipment
If some items are in stock but you cannot satisfy the entire shipment, then you will be prompted to split the shipment. All the items that were not accepted will then be assigned to another store for fulfillment, creating a new shipment for the missing items that goes through order routing for assignment. That shipment will then be sent to a new fulfiller that can process it.
The example below shows the buttons that will available if you only have partial quantity in stock.
- Click Split Shipment.
- If you select Exclude location from future assignments, then Order Routing will ignore your location for subsequent shipment assignments. Shipments can still be manually assigned to your location, but you will no longer receive automatic assignments from Order Routing until the inventory records are refreshed for your location.
Reassign the Shipment
If you do not have any of the items in stock, then you will be able to reassign the entire shipment to a new location for fulfillment instead.
- Click Assign Shipment.
- If you select Exclude location from future assignments, then Order Routing will ignore your location for subsequent shipment assignments. Shipments can still be manually assigned to your location, but you will no longer receive automatic assignments from Order Routing until the inventory records are refreshed for your location.
Optional: Waiting for Transfer
If STH Consolidation is being used, then a Waiting for Transfer step will follow Validate Stock. During this step, the user must wait while other locations ship inventory to the fulfillment location.
Any items that are in stock at the fulfillment location will be displayed in a table titled Items Available to Ship, but you will not be able to ship them until the transfers have been received. Once all transfers have been received, the shipment will automatically progress to the Print Pack Sheet step.
Transfers are listed with their shipment number, assigned location, and current status as well as a table detailing the items included in that transfer. The Review This Transfer button will redirect you to its shipment details listing at the assigned location, allowing you to view and fulfill that transfer if you have access to the location.
The below example shows a case where one item is already in stock and multiple transfer shipments have been created for the remaining items. Each transfer shipment is listed as its own separate table.
Print Packing Slip
The packing slip is inserted into the package for the customer. It generally includes information about the order and order items, relevant contact details for customer service and fulfillers, return instructions, and more.
- Click Print Packing Slip.
- Click Proceed To Prepare For Shipment.
It is possible to split a shipment into multiple packing slips, such as if you require additional boxes to ship everything - see the Pick and Pack guide for more information about how to do this.
Prepare for Shipment
In Prepare for Shipment, the packed box is made ready for pickup by a carrier.
- Provide the carrier information, box size (choose from the displayed types that auto-fill the dimensions, or enter custom package dimensions), and weight.
- Enter a tracking number.
- You can add multiple tracking numbers as needed by clicking Enter the Tracking Number again.
- Click Print Shipping Label to print the label.
- Once the package is ready, click Yes, Complete Shipment. The Kibo Composable Commerce Platform will now consider the shipment to be fulfilled.