Re: [BPCS-L] Voiding a shipment

[Al Mac <macwheel99@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

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.

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