Shipment basics - request for input to "The book"

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.

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:

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.

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

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

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.