We’re pleased to announce the release of OrderFlow 4.3.5. This release includes a number of significant changes in order processing and inventory management functionality, new courier integration enhancements, as well as enhancements to OrderFlow’s billing and activity tracking functionality.

Refinements to Order Management Following Stock Adjustments

This release comes with some major changes to the way that OrderFlow deals with shipments when required stock is no longer available as the result of a stock adjustment.

Previously, the system behaviour typically involved a full reset of the affected shipments. For B2C environments the impact is relatively low. For B2B environments with large trade orders, the effect can be much more significant, with the potential to interrupt active picks.

The improvements in OrderFlow 4.3.5 involve the following changes:

• OrderFlow can automatically attempt to find a suitable alternative picking location for the affected order line
• Depending on the configuration, if no alternative stock is found, OrderFlow can allow for the shipment to be split so that the lines in the shipment for which stock is still available can be progressed without interruption
• If a change to the shipment is appropriate, the change is limited where possible to the affected order line. Other order lines retain their assignments as before

The overall affect of these changes is to significantly reduce the frequency of occasions when unexpected stock adjustments impact the order picking and assignment. Where this does take place, the new release ensures the impact stock changes are kept to a minimum.

Courier Integration

The 4.3.5 release involves a number of courier related enhancements. The release includes a mechanism to upload into OrderFlow courier labels and other shipment documents supplied by a third party, such as Borderless360.

We now allow shipments to be picked and packed before they’ve been associated with a courier, this is particularly useful in large trade shipments where the number, weight and dimensions of the cartons or pallets within a shipment have to be known before the carrier choice can be made.

With this release we’ve added more flexibility in the timing for retrieving courier labels, separating this operation from the action of submitting and validating the shipment with the courier.

We’ve refined the options around the creation of packages for shipments that have been picked to licence plates. With OrderFlow 4.3.5, you have the choice of creating these packages during the licence plate pick itself (suitable for pallet-based couriers), or deferring this to the scan to pack operation (suitable for consumer parcel shipments).

Bulk Serial Number Scanning

With OrderFlow 4.3.5 we have added a mechanism which allows for all of the serial numbers for a carton to be captured via a single barcode scan during the scan to pack operation. This is suitable for scenarios where the carton contains a predetermined number of serial numbered items of the same SKU, and that all of these serial numbers are present on a QR code on the carton.

This feature allows for a significant time saving, as previously it would only have been possible to scan to pack each of these items individually.

Stock Status and Inventory Recording

Recent releases of OrderFlow have added numerous refinements that allow for the status of stock to be recorded independently of the storage location for the stock. In OrderFlow 4.3.5 we have added a further change that allows for the inspection and quarantined stock attributes to be stock status aware. Depending on the stock status configuration, these attributes can be determined either directly from the stock status, or inferred from the equivalent attributes of the storage location type. The overall product inventory calculations will take into account these settings.

Billing and Activity Tracking Enhancements

OrderFlow 4.3.5 introduces a number of refinements to the capture and management of billing and activity related information on the system.

With this release we have added a new attribute capture framework that allows for custom data to be captured against various entities. The attribute capture framework allows for the controlled capture of custom data onto the system.

Attribute values can be constrained to particular data types (e.g. numeric) or even selectable values from drop down lists or custom reports, and subjected to custom validation scripts. This framework can be used for a number of entities on the system, including shipments and order lines, deliveries, returns as well as products and locations.

With OrderFlow 4.3.5, it is now possible to set channel-specific billing rates. Previously, it was only possible to set billing rates at the organisation-level.

Ad hoc activity entries, such as time booking, can now be linked to specific entities such as deliveries, returns, shipment batches, etc.

Other Enhancements

Other improvements worth also worth mentioning include:

• the ability to fetch individual orders from Shopify by order ID (and not just by order reference)
• improvements to the user interface for adding workstation properties
• the ability for a user to add a despatch comment via the shipment details screen

The 4.3.5 release includes over 70 enhancements and bug fixes.