Deliver in three steps with packing

Every warehouse in this installation is set to Deliver (1 step), and Multi-Step Routes — the setting that offers anything else — is switched off. Deliveries run from WH/Stock to Customers in a single hop. So this article describes a configuration you can move to, not the one you are running.

There is a second setting to be aware of before you start, because the two are easy to confuse. Three-step delivery gives you a packing stage; it does not give you packages. Recording the actual crates and pallets — Put in Pack, package types, package barcodes — belongs to the separate Packages setting, and that one is off on this installation too. Turning on Multi-Step Routes does not turn it on.

Both locations sit beside WH/Stock under the warehouse, not inside it. Goods in the packing zone or at output still count towards the product's on-hand quantity, but they are already committed to an order and are outside the location anything else reserves from.

Confirming the sales order creates one transfer — the Pick. The Delivery smart button on the order reads 1, and this is the single most confusing thing about the mode for anyone used to the one-step flow.

Validating the pick creates the Pack transfer, and the smart button becomes 2. Validating the pack creates the Delivery Order, and the smart button becomes 3, showing all three documents in the order they happened. Each transfer is born Ready, so there is never a queue of documents waiting on one another and never a delivery sitting in Waiting Another Operation.

All three ship with Create Backorder set to Ask, so a short pick asks what to do with the remainder each time. Decide it deliberately: a backorder keeps a second transfer for the shortfall, declining closes the transfer at the quantity moved. The one setting to keep away from is Never, which drops the shortfall with no record.

The Shipping Policy on the delivery — As soon as possible or When all products are ready, on the Additional Info tab — matters more in this mode than in one step, because a partial pick now propagates through two further documents. On a crated order, When all products are ready usually reflects what the yard would do anyway.

With the Packages setting on, the pack transfer gains a Put in Pack button at the foot of its Operations tab. Select the lines that go into one crate, press it, and WindoorERP creates a package record holding them. The button appears only while the transfer is open — not on a draft, not on a done one — and a Packages smart button then appears at the top of the transfer listing what was made.

Package types are the templates for those crates, defined under Inventory ▸ Configuration ▸ Delivery ▸ Package Types. Each carries a Package Type name, a Barcode, a Sequence Prefix for the package references it generates, and its Length, Width, Height, Weight and Max Weight. The list shows a Has Contents column, which tells you whether any package of that type currently holds stock — a type with contents is one you should not be redefining.

Without the Packages setting the packing step still works, but it records only that the goods moved from the packing zone to output. Nothing tells the driver what is on the lorry, and nothing scans. That is the honest limit of three-step delivery on its own.