A warehouse shipment in Business Central is the document your shipping team works from when outbound orders leave the warehouse. It pulls lines from released source documents, like sales orders, outbound transfers, and purchase returns, into one place so the team can pick, check, and post what went out the door.
One thing to be clear about early. The process is not fully automatic. Someone releases the order, someone creates the shipment, someone picks, and someone posts. Which of those steps you need depends on how the location is set up, and that is where most warehouse projects either go smoothly or get messy.
Table of Contents
In this article we will discuss what a warehouse shipment is, the step-by-step process, and how it applies to Canadian operations.
If you are new to the module, start with our overview of Business Central.
Before this, let’s understand warehouse shipment first.
What is warehouse shipment in Business Central?
Warehouse shipment in Business Central refers to the process of managing the outbound shipment of goods from a warehouse. It allows businesses to manage the movement of products from the warehouse to customers or other locations.
By using warehouse shipment, businesses can ensure that their shipments are accurate, timely, and tracked effectively. This minimizes the risks of errors in inventory or customer deliveries.
Dynamics 365 Business Central provides flexibility in warehouse management, allowing organizations to choose between simple and complex warehouse processes.
What is the purpose of warehouse shipment?
Multiple businesses across industries use Dynamics 365 Business Central. With warehouse management functionality, businesses can streamline their shipment process, including packaging and shipment.
Increased Operational Efficiency
Businesses can process more orders in less time by automating the shipment process, which boosts productivity and lowers labour costs. This empowers businesses who want to manage substantial shipping volumes with low error rates.
Improved Accuracy and Reliability
Order fulfillment mistakes are decreased when manual data entry is eliminated through warehouse shipments. This improves reliability in shipping, resulting in fewer returns or complaints, which occur due to incorrect orders being dispatched.
Cost Optimization
Businesses can cut shipping expenses by combining many orders into a single shipment by using warehouse shipment. Additionally, it facilitates real-time inventory updates, which optimize carrying costs by preventing stockouts and overstocking.
Greater Flexibility in Shipping
The ability to manage both partial and aggregated shipments gives organizations the option to optimize their order dispatching process. For example, if only a portion of an order is available, businesses can still ship what is in stock without delaying the entire shipment. This improves customer happiness.
Seamless Integration with Other Systems
Warehouse Shipment is integrated with other modules in Microsoft Dynamics Business Central, such as Sales, Inventory, and Finance. This integration gives businesses a smooth end-to-end solution by ensuring that shipment operations are in line with sales orders, inventory management, and financial reporting.
How to create and post a warehouse shipment, step by step
Below we discussed the steps to create and post a warehouse shipment:
Set up the location: Open the Location Card and turn on Require Shipment. Turn on Require Pick if you want separate pick documents. Add bins if the location is used.
Release the source document: Release the sales order (or transfer or return order). Releasing it creates the outbound warehouse request that the shipment draws from. An unreleased order will not show up.
Create the warehouse shipment: Either choose Create Warehouse Shipment from the released order or open the Warehouse Shipment page and use Get Source Documents to pull in several orders for the same location. Check the lines, quantities, and bin codes.
Release the shipment: Releasing tells the warehouse the shipment is ready to be handled.
Create the pick: On the shipment, choose Create Pick. Business Central generates the warehouse pick documents with the bins to take items from. In advanced setups you can also create picks from a pick worksheet.
Register the pick: Warehouse staff pick the goods and register the pick. The pick stays open until the full quantity on the shipment has been registered, so a short pick needs a decision, not a workaround.
Post the warehouse shipment: Once the items are registered as picked, post the shipment. This creates posted warehouse shipments and the posted sales shipment and reduces inventory.
Invoice the order: Shipping and invoicing are separate actions. Depending on the option you choose when posting, you can ship only or ship an invoice. If you ship only, the sales invoice is posted later from the order. Decide which one your finance team wants before go-live.
Note: If your location does not require picks, skip steps 4 and 5; the picking is confirmed on the shipment itself.
Key Features of Warehouse Shipment
When it comes to warehouse shipment management, Microsoft Business Central offers a range of key features that streamline the pick-and-ship procedure, manage multiple shipments, and ensure seamless connectivity to purchase orders.
Procedure for Pick and Ship
Simplifying the pick-and-ship procedure is a key component of Business Central's warehouse shipments. Warehouse employees get the pick lists based on warehouse shipments, which guarantees that the correct products are selected for delivery. The system updates the status when the items are chosen, enabling effective shipping of the merchandise.
Managing Several Shipments
Business Central facilitates the management of numerous shipments at once. The system can create and track individual shipping reports for each order, even if they are all going to different clients or locations. This feature is essential when business deals with high-volume products, where accuracy can’t be overlooked.
Integration with Sales Orders
Business Central's warehouse shipments and sales orders are intricately linked. The system creates a warehouse shipment document automatically after a sales order is confirmed. This lowers the possibility of errors and does away with the requirement for human data entry.
Uses of Warehouse Shipment in Business Central
Businesses can use various use cases for warehouse shipment in Business Central according to their requirements. It is crucial for streamlining operations and improving customer satisfaction. Let’s see them:
Standard Shipment
When a customer places an order, the warehouse team completes the shipment without any incomplete or backordered deliveries. The system creates the required shipping documentation and lowers the inventory automatically. Within Dynamics Business Central, this is the most basic and common type of shipping.
Partial Shipment
Sometimes, all products are not available for shipping right away; available products are shipped right away, and remaining ones are shipped later. Businesses can send what is available while keeping the backorder for the remaining items open with Business Central's partial shipping feature. This effectively manages inventory while guaranteeing client pleasure.
Consolidated Shipment
Consolidated shipments are enabled by Dynamics 365 Business Central for companies that handle several sales orders for the same client. This implies that numerous orders can be consolidated into a single shipment, lowering the cost of transportation and increasing productivity.
Warehouse shipments for Canadian distributors and manufacturers
Canadian operations tend to run into the same few situations. Business Central handles them if the location setup matches how the warehouse really works.
Multiple orders: A distributor in Toronto or Calgary serving the same customers daily can group orders by location and ship date on one warehouse shipment instead of working order by order.
Partial shipments and back orders: Long supply lines, especially for imported stock, make short shipments routine. Keeping the quantity open on the order avoids phone calls asking where the rest is.
Multi-location: The required shipment is set per location. A manufacturer in Ontario with a plant and a separate distribution warehouse, or a business with sites in Vancouver and Edmonton, can run a basic setup in one and an advanced setup in the other. Transfer orders between them use the same outbound flow.
Tax and invoice: GST/HST and provincial taxes such as PST are calculated on the sales invoice, not on the shipment. So, goods shipped but not yet invoiced are the number your accountant will want to understand at month-end, especially for a CRA filing period. Agree on the ship-and-invoice routine before you go live.
If you are comparing partners for a rollout, a Business Central partner in Canada should be able to explain how these options map to your own warehouse, not just demo the standard screens.
Common reasons a warehouse shipment does not work as expected
The order was never released, so nothing appears in Get Source Documents.
The required shipment is off at the location.
Bin codes are missing, or the shipment bin on the location card is not set.
The pick was only partly registered, so the shipment cannot be posted in full.
Shipments are posted but never invoiced, which leaves open balances nobody owns.
If your team uses handheld scanners for picking, look at Tasklet Mobile WMS or Insight Works as add-ons.
Moreover, for stock that does not reconcile after shipping, see our guide to inventory reconciliation in Business Central.
Utilize Warehouse Shipment in the Best Way with Dynamics Square
Business needs to enhance customer satisfaction. So, they need to ensure inventory accuracy and shipment efficiency. Warehouse shipment in Business Central becomes crucial for businesses to achieve their goal and overcome obstacles related to outbound logistics.
However, to leverage warehouse shipment for automating the shipment process and get real-time data, you need to partner with a solution expert. Dynamics Square is a leading Microsoft Solutions Partner in Ontario with in-depth expertise in Business Central. Whether you are planning a new implementation or need support for a warehouse that is not behaving, we can start with a short review.
In case you have any trouble, call our expert consultation at +1 778 381 5388 or write us an email at info@dynamicssquare.ca.
