Much in the same way that it’s possible to assign orders under “Deliveries (own vehicles)” to vehicles, and those under “Deliveries (courier)” to different couriers, it would be handy if it were possible to similarly categorise/organise orders under “Collections” somehow.
Ideally it would be flexible/customisable, to allow for multiple possible use cases - e.g to split AM and PM collections, or trade vs retail, or one haulier vs another when pallet collections etc.
In addition to this we think it would be helpful to assign ‘Collections’ to hauliers. We use this manifest for palletised goods that are collected by hauliers rather than couriers for small consignments. It would be good to be able to assign them to the haulier but also to add a reference for the consignment, and potentially AM/PM would be helpful too as Greg suggests.
I think a prompt to fill with a consignment number if known as well would be helpful, even pulling to the delivery note that gets printed and passed to the driver.
Thanks everyone. I can see how groups/categories would be helpful in the collections section (and also even in the couriers section).
Can I ask why pallet/haulier deliveries are being put through the collections section, rather than the couriers section (with the right haulier “courier” assigned)? I’m sure there’s a good reason, but putting these through as courier orders would mean that you could assign them to the right haulier and allow the entry of consignment numbers.
To add our use case here - we would put a pallet delivery in as a collection where the haulier has been arranged by the customer, this mostly happens for us with export, but very rarely domestically too.
In this instance, it lets the warehouse team know to prepare the pallet, but not to arrange delivery. The pallet can then also be signed for in breww as having left us for our records.
We tend to use the collections section for large/pallet network/haulier deliveries, and the couriers section for small/direct/car/van/courier deliveries. This helps our warehouse and logistics departments to quickly and easily distinguish between orders that need significant advanced preparation (pallets), versus those that don’t.
Yes, this is the same reason we do it. Its quite a different task to pick/pack small courier parcels (and sometimes done by other people) compared to the warehouse task of preparing the pallets for haulier collection.
just reiterating that it would be really helpful to be able to organise collections. We are looking to have a better way of tracking consignment numbers against haulier collections and if we had a way of assigning an order to a haulier we could be sure that it had been booked and that it had a consignment number associated with it.
Thanks, Hazel, and I’m sorry for the slow response.
I understand why you’d like these in the Collections section, and I’m happy leaving this feature request open to get to one day, but I honestly, don’t see why you can’t just use the Couriers section, as it’s got these features already and this use case is exactly what it was designed for.
I might be missing something, but I don’t see why you cannot just create a “Courier” named “Haulier” (or the actual name of the haulier, or even multiple) and then use this to categorise their deliveries. This would let you generate picks/manifests/delivery-notes for just their orders, and even let you enter the consignment number. Although under the same “main heading” as other courier orders, they’re still able to be categorised separately.
The courier’s section does what you’re asking for. In all honestly, it seems to me that you’re just using the wrong section for these orders. Maybe our naming choice of “Couriers” is a little confusing.
With the number of outstanding feature requests, and the fact that all the key features being asked for already exist in a section purpose-built for exactly your use case, I don’t feel that I can prioritise us building this request over many of the others on the list.
If I’ve still missed an important point, please do let me know as I’m happy to discuss and be proven wrong
I’d really like to reiterate how useful being able to assign ‘collections’ to different hauliers would be. It is not practical at all to add this under the ‘couriers’ tab as it is a different type of work and different people who organise it. It would help us communicate and keep track of consignments (pallet orders) and whether they had been booked and consignment numbers with the various hauliers.
I have the difficult job of trying to work out what features should be built next. I don’t mean to be blunt or rude in any way, but as I’ve said before, you’re missing these features as you’re trying to use the “collections” section for something it’s not intended for. And I still don’t understand why you can’t use the purpose-built “courier” section for managing these orders, as that’s exactly what it is intended for and it has the features that you’re asking for.
Why? It would be really helpful for me to understand why this is the case.
I really don’t mean to come over as rude or like I’m not listening (and I’m sorry if it does come over that way), but I do need to understand why the feature is needed before I can consider moving it up the priority list. Thank you
It doesn’t come across as rude, I understand things need to be prioritised. When we look at the workload for the day we need to understand how busy our driver will be (own deliveries) what needs to be prepared the day before (haulier) and what needs to be prepared on the day in the morning (courier). Haulier collections typically are larger to prepare, take more time, require a forklift. These are always organised in advance for collection on a specified day. Courier orders come in overnight/weekend and are done on the morning of despatch - this also gives us an idea of how busy the day is and what resources are needed. Its not that we CANT use couriers, it just simply doesn’t help us to do that where having different tabs for the manifests does. Today we have realised that if we could assign to different hauliers we would be able to confirm easily that transport bookings are in hand. Maybe other breweries are different but from the comments above, it seems like others also work our way.
What is the collections tab meant for? We don’t have any individual customers coming in to our brewery to collect orders, only hauliers. We aren’t open to the public.
Yes, this is exactly how it’s intended to work. Sorry, I assumed this was something you were doing all along. If you need any help with managing couriers (or hauliers, they can all fit under the “couriers” title), please let our support team know. This is how we expect people to categorise deliveries within the courier section, so if this isn’t what’s been happening up to now, it might explain where the confusion has come from.
Once deliveries are categorised by courier, you can easily see totals for each by weight, the quantity of orders, total monetary value, etc, and print manifests for each category (“courier”). A bit like this:
