It of important to be able to either schedule a delivery to meet customer requirements or to respond to customer queries about the status of a delivery. To facilitate these scenarios an additional factbox is provided on the Sales Order and Sales Return Order. An example of the factbox from a Sales Order is shown below:
From this factbox is it easy for the sales order processer to see the current Route Number the order is assigned to, the Shipment Date, the Delivery Area, the Drop Number (and the total number of drops on the route) and the current Status of the Route. At a glance this can confirm the delivery date and status and allow the Sales Oder processor to give an estimate of the likely delivery time based on the drop order.
Further information can be found by selecting the menu options associated with the Factbox:
By default Clever Shipment Management will select the earliest date that a delivery can be made to the destination, however the customer may request delivery on a different date. To select a delivery date, select Schedule Delivery from the menu. This will display a new dialog as below:
This shows all available delivery options. If the customer has requested a particular date and this is available for delivery then the appropriate option will be highlighted in green to make it easier to identify. Selecting an option and clicking OK will amend the sales order to use the selected Delivery Option and Shipment Date.
If regular deliveries are made to the same address, it is possible that a delivery is already scheduled to the address. In this case it may be more efficient to add the order to an existing drop. Selecting the Scheduled Drops action displays a dialog showing all drops currently scheduled for the address.
If an existing drop is suitable select that drop and the select Add to Drop, otherwise select Cancel to allow the drop to be scheduled normally.
Note: It may not be possible to add to some drops depending on the Current Status of the route it is assigned to. These drops will be greyed and the Add to Drop button disabled.
Select Show Route to view the Route page. It is also possible to quickly view a map showing the drops on the route by selecting Route Map.
A similar factbox is present on the Sales Return Order allowing collections to be scheduled.
Note: If integrations to other systems are enabled then there may be additional options on the Fact Box to show real-time information about the status of the drop.