Re: Voiding a shipment -- BPCS-L

Our situation on 405CD is that mistakes happen but do not get discovered until we are ready to do the Billing.

There are various query/400 which we run, driven off of BBL file linked to other files ... the BBL file contains that which was shipped but not yet billed.

Various co-workers who know what should have been shipped, they see errors on our "ship lists" and I hear * Al ... before billing, can you fix this * Customer Service had not yet priced this before it got shipped, and the price should be ...... * We have several order lines based on quantity discount pricing and the wrong line got picked and shipped ... the price on this shipment should be ... * Shipping made a mistake ... it wasn't 250 that got shipped ... it was 150 * Oops ,,, we shipped the right stuff, but picked the wrong order line ... the item that was REALLY shipped was * Please void this shipment line (delivery ticket #) so that it does not get billed

And many other scenarios ... I just giving you a taste. By DFU (what I call a BACK DOOR), I am able to make changes to BBL ECH ECL and other files, before the BIL500 and the result is the invoicing the way the people have requested. In some cases, after the billing, I reverse some of the changes I just made, such as to the Customer PO# that this was supposed to go out on, or combination of warehouse and profit center, because it was only that shipment messed up, not the whole order.

I then inform the people in charge of customer orders and inventory if there are other corrections needed, practical. I realize some areas we have not yet figured out how to tweak.

I recognize that our approach is not GAAP and in violation of all kinds of regulations, but the name of the game for our company is: * If we screw up, let's fix it before the customer finds out and sees that we messed up. Customers can get annoyed with us in proportion to the number of screwups they encounter, so it is essential to keep their exposure to them to a minimum. * Wherever possible, let's avoid the complication of going through a formal procedure of acknowledging a mistake and fixing it, such as our RMA which is also used for billing corrections that are brought to our attention by the customer, For example, if the mistake was not caught by people before billing, but instead the customer finds out before our people.

There have been a few shipping errors I have not been able to solve with DFU before Billing, such as the need for an ECS line that was not realized until after shipment ... there was a problem with the intended shipment method, and it had to go an expedited way, which meant additional shipping charges, and they wanted that on same invoice as the original shipment, not on a later BIL600 adjustment. This was on an order that had just the one order line, filled by the shipment.

Incidentally, we are on UPS World Ship and we send data about our shipments to the UPS using links to latest info via BBL file ... this means that when there is one of these screwups that we fix with back door or BIL600 or whatever, it is too late to fix the UPS World Ship so our people are supposed to know that UPS World Ship needs to be fixed manually, in parallel with the kinds of fixes we have done traditionally with BPCS.

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Al Macintyre  http://www.ryze.com/go/Al9Mac
BPCS/400 Computer Janitor ... see
http://radio.weblogs.com/0107846/stories/2002/11/08/bpcsDocSources.html