A trip is one truck-load leaving the warehouse: a set of orders assigned to a cage, picked into it, checked (audited) in it, and shipped out. Trip control follows every trip through those stages and shows two things — what still needs attention, and what left the building.
The board
The board is in four sections, top to bottom:
- In flight — trips that have not left yet. Each row says what the trip still needs: pieces to audit, pieces to despatch, or nothing yet.
- Left today — trips that shipped today, with the time the last piece was scanned onto the truck and how long loading took (first ship scan to last).
- Shipped earlier — the recent history, folded away until you open it.
- Never closed — trips still open in your warehouse system two weeks after their planned despatch date with no scan since. They are not in flight; someone needs to close or cancel them at source.
Every row shows who the trip is for (stores and franchisees by name), the trip quantity, how many pieces were picked, audited and shipped, and how many were documented in your ERP once it settled. The Needs column says in words what a manager would ask: 38 to despatch, 19 under, 6 reversed, clear.
The trip quantity is the sum of the orders and transfers the trip was built from. It is always the number to hold the trip to. The picking slip is written as the trip loads and shows what actually went on, so once a trip has left, shipping fewer pieces than the trip quantity reads as under.
A difference of one piece counts. If a trip shipped 205 and the ERP documents 193, the row says so.
Opening a trip
Click a row to see the trip's three stages. The stage the floor is on is open; earlier stages fold to a line that keeps their status. The open stage is read store by store: each store, franchisee or warehouse has its own block with what it has picked, audited, shipped and, once settled, what was loaded, documented and reversed for its orders. A store with pieces still outstanding opens on those pieces. A store with nothing outstanding is a single line with a button to show its pieces, so the page is as long as the problem, not as long as the trip.
Each store's line also shows what its orders asked for. Once the trip has loaded, a store that received fewer pieces than it ordered reads under on its own line, and where the ERP documents fewer pieces than were loaded for a store, that shortfall sits on the store too. Orders that were built into the trip but never reached the cage at all leave no trace in the warehouse system, so their pieces are shown at the top of the trip as "on orders never loaded", without a store.
Bases and headboards leave by a single scan and are not allocated to an order until the trip ships, so on a live trip they sit under Not yet allocated to an order. Once the trip has shipped, every piece shows its destination.
A piece is counted against the order on the trip that asked for that item. Where two orders on the same trip asked for the same item, the earlier order is filled to what it ordered before the next receives a piece. This matters for items scanned in bulk, such as mattress protectors or pillow cases, where the warehouse scans one line per piece against the item rather than a serial number: the split between orders follows what was ordered, not which order happened to be scanned first.
At the top of the trip: what was expected, what was scanned, and anything not scanned or over. Once the trip has left: when, and how long loading took.
What went wrong, order by order
Each store line names every problem it has, not just the most urgent one. A store can be short on one order and have a reversal in the ERP on another, and both are said.
Beneath that, the trip lists its problems one line at a time. Each line names the order, the item and how many pieces, so a shortfall can be chased rather than only noticed. There are five kinds:
| Reads | Means |
|---|---|
| not shipped | The order asked for it and it never left the building. |
| more than ordered | More pieces went than the order asked for. |
| on no order of this trip | Pieces are on the trip that none of its orders asked for. |
| picked, not shipped | Picked into the cage and still there. |
| not documented in SYSPRO | It went out on the slip but was never entered in the ERP. |
| reversed in SYSPRO | It was entered in the ERP, then reversed out afterwards. |
A shortfall can only ever be named to an item and a quantity, never to a particular piece. Nothing was scanned, so there is no piece to point at. Where pieces do exist, such as stock picked but not shipped, they are listed individually with their serial numbers.
The same pieces can appear under two headings. Stock sitting in the cage that nobody ordered is both surplus and unshipped, and each line answers a different question. Read the lines as facts about the same pieces rather than adding them together.
A trip still being loaded has no orders to judge against yet, so surplus is not reported until its picking slip exists.
Below the stages: the orders on the trip, store by store — what each order asked for, what was loaded and shipped for it, the document your ERP raised (a transfer for your own stores, an invoice for a franchisee), how many pieces it documents, and anything reversed afterwards. A store whose orders are whole is a single line with a button to open them. Reversals are netted — six pieces sent back two days later show as six short, not as extra documentation.
What the colours mean
- Red: someone must act — pieces waiting to be audited, a shortfall, pieces the ERP has not documented.
- Amber: worth a look — pieces waiting to be despatched, a trip over its expected count, a reversal.
- Green: clear.
- Grey: no verdict yet — nothing has been scanned, or the ERP documents have not arrived.