Question

Third-Part software options for Inbound Shipment Tracking

  • 3 May 2023
  • 1 reply
  • 150 views
Mdangelo
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Userlevel 4
Badge +8

We would like to know if anyone uses any additional software to enhance IFS capabilities to track inbound shipments.  The majority of our Distribution part of the business is 90%+ international.  Many of our purchase orders consist of 20-50 lines that may ship multiple dates and methods, some may even need to change to a direct ship to the customer. We are looking to improve the following:

  • The ability to have a PO “Planned and/or Confirmed SHIP date” for tracking our inbound offshore shipments. We realize there is a Incoming Dispatch Advice for po ship dates, tracking details and ship vias, but we want to be able to see all the information in one place on the PO. We need better visibility of what is in transit.
  • Splitting lines: A very large portion of the shipments end up shipping partial and we want a better method to split the shipments. 
  • Update dates in mass: we need to update a mass amount of po lines which consists of multiple lines across multiple purchase orders that are ocean freight containers. Standard IFS functionality does not offer an easy way to pull this data in and update in mass.

Any recommendations welcome. 

Thank you! Michelle D’Angelo

Michelle DAngelo, Caldwell Manufacturing Company

1 reply

P
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Userlevel 5
Badge +13

Hi Michelle,

Consider that PO and PO lines shows your request to your supplier. Once it’s confirmed, until the material is shipped by your supplier, the PO and PO lines won’t have any update.

But I can suggest on the fly several options for your questions:

  1. The Incoming Dispatch Advice is received when the supplier ships the parts to you (or incoming delivery notification when parts are delivered directly to your end customer). Then, as referred, PO is not updated until the parts are indeed received. When in transit, you could use the information available in Incoming Dispatch Advice lines to update some custom fields to be added in PO or PO lines. Then, by means of a custom event, such fields could be inserted or updated when the Incoming Dispatch Advice is received.
  2. Same method than before. In this case you would receive several Incoming Dispatch Advices with the different quantities being shipped. Then, adding more fields like Ship date 1, ship qty 1, ship date 2, ship qty 2… you would cover the partial shipments. Logic of custom event should then consider if previous ship date or ship qty has been inserted to proceed with insertion in next one.
  3. I’m not sure in which version you are in, but from App9, you have the excel add-in to be able to do migration of data from excel in an easy way. Then, you would be able to update masively the PO lines.

I hope this could help.

Regards,

Pilar

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