Carrier Connect
From Orderwave 2.0 Documentation
Carrier Connect is a set of shipping tools within Orderwave. Carrier Connect allows you to connect to your chosen carriers and create shipping labels, obtain tracking numbers, create integrated packing slips, pick lists, and kit packing instructions.
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Creating a "Carrier Connect" batch
To access Carrier Connect, navigate to Tools > Shipment Tools > Carrier Connect in the orderwave explorer. This interface will tell you how many orders have already been deducted from inventory and are ready to be shipped out.
When working with Carrier Connect to ship your orders, its necessary to bundle orders together into a batch. How you choose to bundle your orders together can make your production team's job easier, so its important to understand the filtering process.
Carrier Connect has several different filters that can be combined to produce batches:
- Order source
- Inventory folders
- Item numbers
- Shipment services
- Ship-to country
Order source refers to the client-defined source of the order. Common examples of order sources include "Drop order" and "website order".
The Inventory folders lets you filter orders by the folders of the items that are in the orders. For example, if you have an inventory folder called "video games", and you wanted to batch all of your "video games" orders, you can select the inventory folders filter to pull just orders with items from the "video games" folder into a batch.
If you're very specific about what SKU you'd like to pull into your batch, you can use the Item numbers filter to select 1 or more items numbers for your batch.
It may be advantageous to pull certain shipment services into a batch, for example, you may want to pull all of your "next day delivery" orders into a batch so that you can pack them out first. In this case, you'll want to use the Shipment services filter to choose specific shipment services.
You can also select orders for your batch by destination country by using the Ship-to country filter.
For inventory specific filters, it's important to point out that you will be pulling order-groups in their entirety into a Carrier Connect batch. Using the "video games" example from above, if an order have an item from the "video games" inventory-folder, but also has an item from the "apparel" inventory-folder, both items from that order-group would be pulled into your new batch.
You do not have to select filters; not selecting filters will produce a batch of all of the orders that are pending shipment.
Before clicking on "Create batch", you may want to give this batch a name. Naming your batches is a good way to keep them organized.
Get shipping labels
Once you've created a batch, you'll be presented with the Carrier Connect Batch interface. This is the interface that will allow you you to obtain shipping labels, tracking numbers, rate quotes, and packing slips.
The different options in this interface are represented in the top of the viewing pane. To get shipping labels and tracking numbers for your orders, make sure that the tab "Get Shipping Labels" is activated.
As is the case with all of the tabs in this interface, you will need to select the packages you're working with by making sure that the checkbox next to each package is selected. There are some tools included in this interface to help you do this. First, in the field headings in the package list you will find a checkbox; this checkbox will let you toggle on and off whether all of the packages are selected. Next, under each interface option you will see the special selection tools; these are predefined selection rules for common selection techniques such as "select all packages without a tracking number" and "select all FedEx packages".
Once you've selected your desired packages, you can obtain shipping labels and tracking numbers for the carriers you've defined in your Carrier Integration Settings. Click the "Create Labels and Get Tracking Numbers" button at the end of the package list to start the process. Carrier Connect will begin communicating on a package-by-package basis to the carrier to obtain the shipment data. It is possible that errors will be generated from the carrier if the package does not meet the carrier's requirements. For example, if you do not have the weights of your inventory items in Orderwave, it is likely that the carrier will reject the package because we can not adequately calculate the weight of the package. As the packages are transmitted to the carrier, any errors that are encountered along the way will be displayed. The errors are also stored in the Carrier Connect Batch interface and you can reference them at any time by clicking on the warning icon next to each package.
When the process has finished, click on the "Process Complete" button and return to the Carrier Connect Batch interface.
If your packages have obtained labels and tracking numbers without error (congratulations!), each package will have an icon with a blue-ribbon medal next to it. You can click on this icon to view the shipping label and the tracking number.
If your packages did generate errors, review the errors by clicking on the warning icon next to each package. Fix the errors and try this process again.
If you've successfully obtained labels and tracking numbers from your carrier(s), you're ready to move on to creating packing slips.
Get Rate Quotes
The "Get Rate Quotes" interface is nearly identical to the "Get Shipping Labels" interface but with the difference being that it only returns the projected cost for shipping the package. The cost for shipping the package is displayed in the package list under the heading "Rate".
Void Shipments
If you've obtained a shipping label and tracking number in error and need to remove them, you can use the "Void Shipments" interface to delete the label and tracking number and void the shipment in the carrier's system.
De-Batch Shipments
If you've inadvertently pulled packages into a Carrier Connect Batch and would like to remove them, you can use this interface to move them out of the batch and back into pending status. This will leave the packages to be pulled into a future batch.
Create Packing Slips
This interface allows you to create a PDF file of packing slips of all of the packages you're going to ship. If you've obtained shipping labels and tracking numbers for your packages, this procedure will create an integrated packing slip; a packing slip that has the shipping label on the same page. If you have not obtained shipping labels for your packages, this procedure will generate a generic shipping label for your packages.
Using the selection tools included in this interface, select the packages that you'd like to generate packing slips for and click the "Create Packing Slips for These Packages" button.
When the process completes, you will be returned to the Carrier Connect Batch interface and a PDF containing your packing slips will have been created. To download your PDF file, click the "Download" button under the "Create Packing Slips" tab. You can also download older PDF files you've created from this batch by selecting them from the pull-down list.
When a PDF packing slip has been created for a package, an Acrobat PDF icon will appear for that package in the package list.
The Packing Slips PDF File
The packing slips generated by the Carrier Connect Batch interface will include 1 packing slip for each package in your batch (1 order may represent multiple packages; see line item grouping for details). In addition, 1 package my span multiple pages in your PDF file if the package has more items than can be displayed on 1 page. If this is the case, the page number on the top of each page will increment for the package.
The last pages of the packing slip PDF file are reserved for the pick list and the kit packing instructions that your production department can use.
