I had a long phone conversation with a gentleman that handles the warehouse processing for one of our Magento clients. They are quite disappointed with the way Magento handles the order fulfillment process. Perhaps there is a better method than what this guy is suggesting, but perhaps Magento needs to be able to flexible in terms of how orders are processed.
Here is the problem: The warehouse tells me that they need to print of the packing slips so that they can go and put the order together. Apparently that’s how they’ve always done things. Magento considers the packing slip printing to be the last step in the process, and therefore marks the order complete. However, that is not the end of the process for this warehouse. There are plenty of times that they need to go in and edit or cancel an order after the packing slip has been printed out, but once an order is completed in Magento, that is no longer possible.
I’d like to think that they aren’t the only warehouse out there that does things this way, and according to the guy I talked with, that’s the way most people do it. If that is the case, I’m going to have to try and write a module that allows you to print off a packing slip at any time for an order, without changing the status of the order. If this guy is right though, I think Magento needs to add in some flexibility for different types of order processing.
I think that situations like the one described fall into a difficult area, where more flexibility may be useful but not necessary in most cases. For smaller retailers, the default order process will work perfectly well, and larger retailers will have a separate ERP system or similar that will handle processing instead of Magento.
It would be nice if Magento’s order processing was more flexible, and with the newly available Magento Contributor Agreement, patches could be submitted by the community to do this.
Thanks for the comment, Chris. I guess I just don’t know enough in general about the different ways people want to process orders. But it seems that flexibility would certainly make sense. But, there are so may people out there saying, “Magento sucks cause it doesn’t do this or that”, so I definitely don’t want to approach the situation like that. I think Magento is amazing. It is just difficult when your client comes to you and says that Magento isn’t working for them and they want you to fix it. Some things are easy to fix, but there are things like re-defining how the order fulfillment process works that are quite difficult.
This is indeed a problem and one I’m encountering at the moment with a client where I’m using Magento for the first time. The order processing does seem a little flawed. If you make any progress on a module to address this then I’d certainly be interested. Keep me posted.
Another issue I’ve discovered is the lack of provision for customs declaration forms. The client wants to print the invoice off onto a sheet of paper with an customs form (which as a peel off sticker at the bottom) but needs to print the totals and order details on this sticker. I have no idea on how to go about that and there doesn’t seem to be any modules out there for it either. Have you come across this before?
If I can figure something out, I will certainly be posting it.
I haven’t had to deal with your other issue that you talked about.
That’s a great idea – do you know the legality behind printing your own? Would you need a scan of the form, or just text?
Also practically would your customer be using an integrated packing sheet, with the sticker at the base, and if so, where do they print the Shipping label?
I’ve seen dual-sticker integrated sheets, which we currently have the shipping address in one, and the return address in the other. I guess it would be easy enough to print a sheet of return addresses, and include the customs info in the other one. They need item names (or type?), numbers, and values right?
What happens if there is a large number of items – can they be ‘summed up’? I guess the usual customs form is a set size, so should be able to.
Thanks!
This is, indeed, a Problem.
I solved it by creating the invoice and the shipping, attached the pdf’s to the email to the warehouse, and then *not* saving the invoices/shipping entities.
We need to print the orders, as well. What I’ve suggested our product people do is click on “Ship”, then print the page LANDSCAPE. Everything fits very well that way, especially if you select the necessary part of the page (basically everything but the header), and “print selection”
Hello Josh, have you had any movement on this? We are a warehouse shipping business that is thinking about moving to Magento but the packing slip issue is huge for us. We definitely use it to pull the order from the warehouse before we ship so if you would like any further info on how our process works to help you out, please feel free to contact me. Thanks very much for your time.
Hi, all! I’m a small retailer now, but I’ve worked in lots of environments and it’s pretty typical to use the Packing Slip to pull the items and prepare the shipment. It generally accompanies the shipment, as well – which means it needs to be included with products, weighed and labelled before it actually ships. So, yes, it is an issue/
Mila’s idea is a great workaround that I’ll probably use. But it seems to me that in the Reports area, you ought to be able to ‘batch’ print all of the new orders or all of the open orders. (A way to choose which orders would be nice as well.)
Magento is great – I’m just getting started with it However I suspect that the folks who designed it haven’t handled the flow in a retail or manufacturing environment. Please don’t take that as criticism – we all have different ways of looking at processes and if someone hasn’t been in that environment, they can’t know.
I’d be interested to find out if this change could be made. I have enough coding skills to be dangerous but I have worked in several environments and would be willing to assist in looking at the flow of information, paperwork and product.
This is an issue coming up for my client as well (including many other pesky issues). Their usual process is to print the packing slip, fill the order, and then complete the order. Sometimes they find that changes need to be made to the order, but if they print out the packing slip, all they can do is add products, they can’t edit or remove products. The only suggestion I’ve got is for them to make screen prints, which is a terrible work around.
Magento won’t support us, even if we offer to pay for the support unless we spend $11k per year on the Enterprise version, and then pay for support on top of that! Why on earth would I pay $11k for software that I am losing confidence in on a daily basis?! Magento is at the top of everyone’s list for ecommerce platforms, but every day I find yet another bug or weird piece of logic that I don’t see in ANY other CMS. I’m embarrassed that I suggested this system.
Sorry for the rant, but this system has cause a lot of needless problems.
I wonder if ver 1.4 has made progress on this? I am just now setting up a new client, and looking to use magento. At my day job (manufacturing company with large warehouse) we use a pick list. This can be printed out independently of a packing list. Just adding my thoughts to this process.
Chadd,
I haven’t actually checked this in 1.4, but my assumption is that it hasn’t changed. I too have worked with people who really want to be able to print out a pick list. Unfortunately, Magento requires you to complete and invoice and a shipment before you can do that.
I am quite surprised that Magento hasn’t accounted for this yet. There are many people that just want to be able to change the status of orders and print out a shipment list without having to walk through the whole fulfilment process of creating invoices and shipments. You would think by now that there would be a config option to change that by now… Hopefully soon.
Hi, we’ve just made an extension for Magento which covers all the points mentioned here.
Magento Pick List
It has 2 types of Pick List, one separated by order ID, one combined by SKU. It also has simplified packing sheets…
Please feel free to contact me with any suggestions.