Absolutely, but it does depend on how you use SpeEDI as to which method [if any] may suit your workflow. Please see below a few different methods for generating orders and consignments faster along with their help articles, if any.


TABLE OF CONTENTS

Orders

Orders are ideal for generating consignments, particularly if you need multiple identical consignments just differing on shipping details. Even if you're not managing orders on behalf of clients or breaking up a single order into multiple shipments, it can still ease the creation and management of Consignments.

Repeat Order

Repeat Order is ideal for replicating orders including the products, particularly where the Client has sent you a new Purchase Order Number

View Order Details


To Use:

  1. From within any Order, press the Repeat Order button and enter the three required fields
    1. Buyers Country [This filters the Client Search list]
    2. Buyer [Can search for past Clients both Registered and Unregistered filtered by Country]
    3. [New] Order Number
  2. Press Continue
  3. Fill out the standard Order form, which contains prefilled information from the previous order, as well as new fields such as Order Date. You can also change details from here, such as the same order but to a different client.
  4. Press Save, this will generate a new order, and the existing product list has carried across


Order Products

Auto-add

This function is available both within Orders and Consignments and is a CSV/Excel based Import of Product information. Functionality differs between Orders and Consignments, so this section will only cover the Orders section.


To Use:

  1. From within an Order, navigate to the Products screen and select Auto-Add
    1. If you're looking to copy products from another order, or want to quickly get a well formatted CSV for use, press the Extract button on the source Orderand open the file in Excel
    2. If you extracted from an Order, please delete Row 2 containing Order Information
  2. Copy and paste the rows from Excel, if you include the header check the "First Line is Header", please see the link below for the order of the information if producing from scratch.
  3. In orders you cannot map the columns, so if the import is not perfect, you will need to manually correct it later after importing, press Preview to see how SpeEDI will interpret the data and either correct and retry or if happy, press Auto-Add.
  4. The products will load into the order and now be usable.

Auto-add Products to an Order


Duplicate

During the Add Products step, if you need to create multiple identical products on an order, such as staged shipments of an order, you can duplicate the Product you are currently editing once finished.


To Use:

  1. From within an Order, navigate to the Products screen and click on any existing product.
  2. [Optional] If you need to create a new product (to later duplicate), press "Add" and enter the product details
  3. Press Duplicate to replicate the product, every press will create one more product. There isn't a lot of notification here so don't press it multiple times trying to get a reaction.
  4. Press Save and the new duplicate products will appear

Add Products


Consignments

Consignments are the actual components used for all the TSW communication and can be added manually [not covered], through the Consignment Auto-Add function or created via Orders. There is also an auto-add component for Products within a Consignment.

Auto-add

Auto-add consignments have two components, Templates, which control ports and the column mapping of the auto-add data file, and the data file of that design. You must have a template before you start auto-adding consignments but you can have several built for various purposes and clients.


Skip to Step 7 if your templates already exist.


To Use:

  1. Navigate to Settings > Templates > Consignment Auto-add
  2. Press Add to create a new template
  3. Select the columns that will be supplied
  4. Assign a Description, this will be for your quick reference when selecting the template
  5. Fill other template fields as required, these will be set when the template is used
  6. Press OK
  7. Build your datafile according to the template and column list set
  8. Navigate to Consignments
  9. Open Options > Auto-add Consignments
  10. Select your Template and press OK
  11. Press Browse and select the data file to import
  12. Fill mandatory fields such as Dates, Voyage and Masterbill (errors will be thrown if any are missed)
  13. Press Auto-add
  14. A consignment for each house bill will be created

Consignment Auto-add Datafile Format


From Order

This is a quick and easy way to generate consignments with like data or to add data to an existing consignment. If you add more product lines to an order where consignments have already been created, then a new consignment created will have just those new products and not all of the products on the order.


If you are creating a subsequent consignment from an order, Skip to step X


To Use:

  1. Create an order [going to skip the general data]
  2. By default you'll end up on the Products screen, but if not, switch to it.
  3. If you are ready to create your Consignment press "Confirm Supply/Add Consignment"
  4. Fill in at least all mandatory fields and press Save


The window will close and the pending products will now be in a newly created consignment, on the right a button will appear that can take you to the new consignment. 


Alternatively you could add more products and create more consignments as required.

Confirm Supply / Add Consignment



Consignment Products

Auto-add

As mentioned under Order Products, Auto-Add also exists for Consignment Products but differs in how it works. It remains a CSV of Product Data, but the columns can be mapped and general specifications set for the CSV in question.


To Use:

  1. From within a Consignment, navigate to the Products screen and click on a product line, this will bring up the Edit screen for that line.
    1. If you're looking to copy products from another consignment, or want to quickly get a well formatted CSV for use, press the Extract button on the source Consignment and open the file in Excel
  2. Press Auto-Add
  3. Copy and paste the rows from Excel, if you include the header check the "First Line is Header", please see the link below for the order of the information if producing from scratch.
  4. Press Auto-match (particularly good if you've copied from an extracted product list) or map the columns by clicking each found column and selecting the data type in SpeEDI, if a product code is supplied, you can also select a Supplier that has product codes loaded to assist with data automation.
  5. Press Next when done and the products will be scanned for warnings and/or load into the order and be usable.

Auto-add Products into a Consignment


Duplicate

As a simpler method for creating multiple identical product lines in a Consignment, you can duplicate an existing line.


To Use:

  1. From within a Consignment, navigate to the Products screen and click on a product line, this will bring up the Edit screen for that line. 
  2. Press Duplicate, each time you press the button a new line will quietly be created in the background, so don't be concerned it didn't do anything, if you press it 5 times, you'll get 5 items.
  3. Press OK when done and the page will refresh with the new items.

Add Products


Hopefully you find an ideal way to create multiple products/consignments as you need them. In writing this article, a few improvements have been identified and will be logged, but at the time of writing these are the current methods and systems.