Shipment basics - request for input to "The book"

Support User
10

IMHO, you would get lost in any ERP if you consider that a parcel is a product and you can modify the order at shipment time to change it.

11

Dear Dominique, thank you for taking the time. I’m very much certain that you are right, and I’m absolutely willing (as written above several times) to learn how to do it correctly. So I understood:

I shall not define the parcel price I’m invoicing to the customer as a product. Got it.

But again - as written above several times - what is the adequate way of doing it? - I installed and activated shipment cost and carrier module. I find

menu > carrier > Configuration > Selection and
menu > Carriers

What should I do with these? - Did I miss any settings required?
And how do I finally assign shipping costs (parcel price) to the actual shipment?

Sorry for being so dumb, but this is (at least to me) not at all self-explaining, and I did not find any explanation. So any help will be appreciated, and certainly an explanation “for the rest of us” in our book will help other people in the future.

Cheers,
Wolf

12

You can (sort of) do what you want like this:
Sale - Invoice Method: On shipment sent
Sale - Shipment cost Method: On Shipment

In the Shipment, in cost tab:set cost and cost sale to the value you like.
When you complete the shipment the invoice will be generated with the right value.
But the sale will still be the old value, which is a mess.

Maybe I am doing you a disservice for showing you a complicated way which should probably not be used.

Maybe the right way is to check statistics: how much money do you lose by wrong package size / year?
Maybe you can add 0.1 euro / package profit, that can account for the cost of the wrong packages.

Also how much effort do you put into this issue and compare it to the amount of money you lose from wrong packages?

13

Refering to the title of this thread “Shipment basics”, I try here to sort things a bit.

If shipment cost is just a cost, then, cost is charged by the carrier and appears in reports
Packaging is often configured as “consumable” so the system considers they are always available.
This was the simple case (and usual case) and I would call it “Shipment basics”.

Now the awful case:
If customer pays a fee added to the sale order, this fee can be calculated and it can be complex to tune it. One must consider the location of delivery, delivery delays, product dimensions and properties which both imply the choice of a carrier and the cost is then to be picked from the tariff of this carrier. Even worse if products require separate packaging. Tryton provide a set of modules to elaborate solutions from simple to complex. A complex calculation requires a complex configuration or even some additional code.

Charging real costs is complex and industry dependent, this is why I previously talked about the book market, which requires the shipment fees to be calculated precisely before shipment ( invoice must be put inside the parcel before closing for VAT reasons, and Tryton did it).

14

Dear friends, I really appreciate your effort&time you’re putting into this discussion. Hope, in the end we’ll have some outcome worth it.

Interesting. Maybe this is country-dependent? - In Germany, the case “shipment included” more or less was introduced with Chinese sellers on e**y, only a few years ago. With all other sellers, it still is a rare exception. We still are used to have as a standard:
products' prices + service/shipment fee = invoice_total
German law says that same VAT applies to shipment fee as on rest of the goods. So in my country (and maybe other ones) this is the “basic case”.

I totally agree - this is an awful case. And as I’m a simple-minded guy, I would not want to go into it.

But there seems to be a middle course:
Finish the parcel, check weight&size and then apply the actual shipment fee. I’m quite certain this is standard at least in my country, maybe in other ones as well. As I have a range of 2,50 to at least 32€ in shipment fees charged, I do not want to neglect these differences. That would annoy my valued customers.

So at the moment, I get the impression that Tryton does not have a mechanism to map this procedure. What I’m thinking about is a popup at “customer shipments”: After “pack”, I should be asked “Which shipment fee applies to this shipment?” - which will then appear on customer’s invoice.

Is it true that we’ll need a particular module like “manually_apply_shipment_fee” to achieve this?

Cheers,
Wolf

15

The cost of shipment sold to the customer can be set on the shipment by editing the “Cost Sale” field from sale_shipment_cost module if the shipment cost method is “On Shipment”.
But an initial shipment cost line must have to be computed on the sale quotation (even if set to 0) by setting a carrier on the sale. The invoiced price will be the value set on each shipment.

16

Quite usual in France, but is not the use case you submitted.
It is not usual to modify the shipment fee after the order is validated.
The alternative to predetermined shipment fees was (up to recently) shipping fee paid at delivery by the customer to the carrier.

17

In fact true. With B2C business, usually shipment fee is fixed with at order time. So I was not precise enough in my description.

This is common in B2B business here. When I know my suppliers, when we trust each others, the charge is dependent on parcel size/weight.

Interesting. I never heard of this before.

So it looks as if there are more different “basic cases” than I expected before.

18

I’m afraid, I am still missing a bit. With that approach described, somewhere at least one shipment fee must be set, I guess - which then can be assigned to the actual shipment. Sorry, but I still do not know how to do this.

19

With awesome help by fellow friend @dotbit via video call, I proceeded a few steps. First, I noticed to have missed to install sale-shipment-cost. But now, another question occured:

In
menu > Carrier > Configuration > Selection,
I can set up “From country”, “to country” and “Carrier”. But in “Carrier”, I can only choose carrier products, which previously have been set up in
menu > carriers > carriers
under “Carrier Products”.

So my guess is that the label “carrier” in
menu > Carrier > Configuration > Selection may not be appropriate, “carrier product” would be better.

The same is in sales, shipment and maybe some other places I’m not aware of.

If I assume the label “carrier product” instead of “carrier”, the proceeding makes sense to me, is easy and straightforward. Should we think about a change in labelling here?

W

20

For me the name is right.

I think the labeling is right.

A carrier defines a carrier, that is someone providing carrier service to you.
A carrier product is the product that this carrier is providing, and depending on the modules you have installed may be charged to the customer.

I think this is right. You should only be able to match from-to routes to existing carriers.
I do not think this is the right place to create new carriers, this is handled by the Carriers.

21

Sorry to be a little picky, but let’s first check wording:

I regard

  • carrier as the company which moves parcels and packages
  • carrier service as physical moving of packages
  • carrier product as the virtual “product” which is used in Tryton to bill the carrier service.

Can we agree on these?

Then, to say it more precisely than above: In
menu > Carrier > Configuration > Selection,
I can set up “From country”, “to country” and “carrier”. But in carrier, I can only choose carrier products. That does not make sense to me. Such, my idea of a inappropriate labelling came into existence.

22

Maybe a simple concrete example would be useful (to disagree over, and to correct where I am wrong :wink:)?

Parties > Parties:

  • Name: Deutsche Post
  • Name: UPS

Products > Products:

  • Name: Standard | Type: Service | Cost Price: 3.99 | List Price: 3.99
  • Name: 2 kg Paket | Type: Service | Cost Price: 5.49 | List Price: 5.49
  • Name: 5 kg Paket International | Type: Service | Cost Price: 26.99 | List Price: 26.99

Carrier > Carriers:

  • Party: UPS | Carrier Product: Standard
  • Party: Deutsche Post | Carrier Product: 2 kg Paket
  • Party: Deutsche Post | Carrier Product: 5 kg Paket International

Then in the Inventory & Stock > Shipments > Customer Shipments you might want to set (for example):

  • Carrier: Deutsche Post - 2kg Paket

So, if the above is a valid current setup and, if I was being pedantic, and we were forgetting what things are called at the moment, then I would use definitions of:

  • carrier the company that moves the parcel and packages (e.g. Deutsche Post)
  • service a specific service (offered by a carrier) to move parcels and packages at an agreed price (e.g. 2 kg Paket with delivery cost 5.49)
  • carrier service a combination of one service offered by one carrier to move parcels and packages at an agreed price (e.g. Deutsche Post - 5kg Paket).

Following on from that, then the following changes would make sense:

  • Carrier > Carrier should be Carrier > Carrier Services

    • The Party field would be Carrier (e.g. Deutsche Post)
    • The Carrier Product field would be Service (e.g. 2 kg Paket)

  • In Inventory & Stock > Shipments > Customer Shipments the Carrier field would be Carrier Service (e.g. Deutsche Post - 2kg Paket)

So in the Carrier > Configuration > Selection:

  • The Carrier field would then be called Carrier Service.
    And, in here you might then have lots of records, including:
    • From Country: Germany,
    • To Country: Great Britain, and
    • Carrier Service: Deutsche Post - 5kg Paket International.

Not sure if that is helpful, (correct?), or not! :thinking:

23

Makes sense for me.

I never considered the possibility to create two carrier records for two different package weights because we have stock_shipment_cost_weight. The carrier service naming would make it more intuitive.

1 Like
24

Thank you very much for taking care. You know, I see my role as the advocate of beginners. For those (I include myself), this things really do matter, and it’s important to be as clear as possible.
So - do you agree that I should file an issue on this?

One more question:
As mentioned above, I found this mistake as well at

  • sales and
  • menu > inventory&stocks > shipments > customers shipments

I do not find it at supplier and internal shipments, but maybe because I did not install the modules necessary for handling incoming or internal shipments.

So where else should we search for this mistake?

Cheers,
Wolf

2 Likes
25

Thank you to everybody who contributed.
To sum up the very basic scenario, as far as I understood:

  • install trytond-sale-shipment-cost and trytond-stock-shipment-cost
  • create parties of your carriers
  • make sure that in you own company, your warehouse (?) and the customers in question, the “country” field is set
  • in menu > products, create shipment products, type “service” and “salable”
  • set up menu > carrier > carrier, to turn those “shipment products” created above into shipment services by attributing “shipment products” to carriers
  • in menu > carrier > configuration > selection, you can limit the selection you get in sale. So it does not matter if you do not fill the “from country” and “to country” fields - you just get a very long list in sales.
  • in menu > sales > configuration > configuration, you can select your default sale shipment method and sale shipment cost method; those can later on be changed in sale and customer shipment.
  • When now creating a sale, you find the field “carrier” (which IMHO should be “shipment service”.). Here you can preselect a shipment service.
  • In menu > inventory&stock > Shipments > Customer Shipments, you can change the shipment service before finishing the shipment. This choice will then be billed on your customer’s invoice.

Let me know if I got something wrong or I’m missing essentials.

Some of you may regard this kind of HOWTO as childish or petty. But please accept that simple-minded people as I am do need this kind of instruction. And I’m absolutely convinced that Tryton would be a much bigger thing if we had this kind of instruction for the main processes.

Well. We now have some in German. (:

Cheers,
Wolf

26

This is where you set the default shipment cost method for new sales. You can change the shipment cost method on each sale manually from the Other Info tab.

2 Likes
27

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