From order to departure: a shipment, end to end

Summary

In Cargoflow there is no separate sales order or picking order: the shipment is a single document that lives through the whole cycle. It starts as the customer's order, is confirmed, allocates stock at specific locations, is linked to the truck at the dock, the operator loads and verifies, and a supervisor closes it. The close is the key moment: it deducts stock, generates the BOL and packing list, records the charges, notifies the customer and, where applicable, their system.

This article follows one shipment from start to finish and stops at every hand-off between modules. The detail of each screen is in Shipment flow and the articles linked below.

Tip: the rule that ties it all together: allocating sets aside, loading records, only closing deducts. Until the close, the goods are still in your stock (reserved) and still count toward storage.

Before you start

What must exist	What for	Where
The shipping and inventory modules enabled	Without inventory the shipment closes as a record but deducts nothing; without billing no charges are created.	Cargoflow enables them.
Available stock for the customer	Only available, unexpired stock at pickable locations is allocated.	The life of stock
Docks and the docks module	To link the truck and let the operator load from the app.	Configuring docks and yard
The loading verification checklist (optional)	Required items block finishing the job.	The operator app
BOL and packing list templates in the warehouse	Without a template, the close does not generate those documents.	Manage templates
Outbound handling in the customer's rate card	Without that row, handling is not billed.	Customer rates
Contacts with email in the Notifications tab	For the shipment-shipped email.	Customer emails and reports

The path in one table

Step	Screen	Who (permission · default roles)	Shipment status
1. Order	Inventory › Shipments › Create Shipment; portal; API; EDI	Create Shipments · supervisor, admin; or the customer	Draft or Confirmed
2. Confirm and allocate	Shipment screen	Create Shipments	Reserved, partial or Confirmed
3. Truck and dock	Operations › Docks, or the shipment's dock job card	Write Docks · supervisor, admin	No change (linked)
4. Loading	My Work › Loading record	Worker with the job assigned	Loading, then Loading complete
5. Close	Shipment screen › Close Shipment	Ship (Close Shipments) · supervisor, admin	Shipped
6 to 9. Stock, documents, charges, customer	Automatic	—	—

1. The order

Path	Status it arrives in	Detail
In the system (Create Shipment)	Save Draft or Save & Confirm	A draft can have no lines and no date, but it needs a customer. To confirm you need the ship date and at least one line (customer, product, quantity above zero and unit). See Create a shipment.
Client portal (Notify shipment › Send notice)	Draft	The warehouse reviews and confirms it. The customer can edit or cancel it (with a reason) while it is still a Draft with no truck. See Request a shipment from the portal.
API	Confirmed, and allocated as far as stock allows	See Connecting a system through the API.
EDI 940	Confirmed, and allocated as far as stock allows	See EDI: what works today and what does not.

The order captured in the system: Save Draft when quantities are not final yet, Save & Confirm when it is firm.

Hand-off: when the shipment becomes workable (created confirmed, confirmed, or a draft arriving from the portal), the bell alerts the warehouse's configured roles. Drafts captured by the warehouse itself do not alert.

2. Confirm and allocate

Confirm Shipment moves the shipment to Confirmed and tries to allocate right away. Allocation sets stock aside at specific locations, with these rules:

Earliest expiry first; stock with no expiry last; on a tie, what arrived first.
Never expired, damaged, on-hold, quarantined or otherwise blocked stock.
Only from pickable, active locations, never from staging.
Only the line's customer (or stock with no owner assigned). Serial-numbered stock is not allocated.

Result	Status	What to do
Enough for everything	Reserved	Wait for the truck.
Enough for part of it	Partial (the line shows how much was allocated)	Load what is allocated, or release and allocate again when more arrives.
Nothing available	Confirmed, with the notice "Confirmed, but stock could not be reserved…"	Receive the goods and click the allocate button on the timeline.

A reserved shipment linked to its truck: the line shows the receipt the goods come from, and the dock job card shows the driver.

Allocation leaves no row in the stock history: its record is the allocation list at the bottom of the shipment screen. To change the lines of a confirmed or reserved shipment, Edit asks for a reason, releases the allocation and allocates again. See Cancel, release the allocation or return a shipment.

3. The truck and the dock

The driver signs in at the kiosk as Pickup (the pickup number is required by default). In Operations › Docks the supervisor assigns a dock and a worker and, in the Link to WMS section, chooses:

An existing shipment — the chosen customer's shipments are suggested. One truck can take several (consolidation).
Create a new shipment — a draft with the driver's details; it needs a customer on the job and the Create Shipments permission.
No link.

It can also be linked later, from the dock job card on the shipment screen (Link / Unlink), which offers the customer's last 20 active pickup jobs. See How to create a dock job.

Hand-off: a shipment can be linked from Draft through Loading, as long as the job's customer is one of the customers on its lines. When linked, the shipment takes from the driver the carrier, name, truck, trailer, plates, pickup number and seal it is missing.

Important: if the trailer the driver registered does not match the one planned on the shipment, the shipment screen shows a yellow warning. Resolve it before loading: it means the wrong truck may have been linked.

4. Loading and its verification

When the operator taps START JOB, the linked reserved shipments move to Loading, and those that were only confirmed try to allocate at that moment. A shipment in Draft does not change: it has to be confirmed first.

In the app, the Loading record panel has:

Seal # — saved on the shipment only if it did not have one.
Quantity loaded per line — never more than what is allocated. Each line sent is marked as verified.
Loading verification — the items the warehouse set up, with their photos. Required items left unchecked (or without their photo) block finishing the job: a message asks to complete the checklist and names the missing items.

The checklist the warehouse sets up: the required items are the hand-off between the operator and the supervisor.

With Save loading and then FINISH JOB, the shipment timeline changes to Loading complete. The operator does not close the shipment: a supervisor does. If the driver leaves with the trailer, the operator answers Yes, Release Dock. See The operator app.

5. The close

The shipment screen shows the Close Shipment panel (in Reserved, Partial or Loading):

Seal number — optional; only shown if the shipment has no seal yet.
Actual ship-out date — today by default; it can be backdated, never set in the future. Storage is billed up to that date.

The system will not close if nothing is loaded, if a loaded line is not verified, or, in a cross-dock, if the inbound receipt is not confirmed. Carrier and trailer are not required. Closing cannot be undone. See Close a shipment.

Important: the panel takes as each line's quantity what the operator recorded; if a line was left at 0, it takes the allocated quantity, and if there is no allocation either, the ordered quantity. That has two consequences: a line the operator marked as 0 ships in full, and in a partial shipment a line with no allocation is billed and reported as shipped even though nothing is deducted. Before closing, compare each line's allocated column against the Picked column; if something did not go on the truck, correct the loading or release that part.

6. The goods leave stock

For each allocation, the close subtracts what was loaded, releases the whole allocation (whatever was not loaded becomes available again) and leaves a Shipped row in the stock line history, linked to the shipment. The shipment becomes Shipped with the departure date and time. See Stock line history.

7. Documents and email

BOL and packing list — generated automatically on close (one per customer in a consolidated shipment) and stored on the shipment. They are only generated if the warehouse has the template; if not, there is no error. See Shipment documents.
Print Documents — from Confirmed on: pick ticket, packing list and BOL. The pick ticket is always regenerated; the others reuse the last stored copy.
Customer email — "Shipment … has shipped", to the contacts who accept that email, with the job photos if enabled and the uploaded files marked to be sent. The generated PDFs (BOL, packing list) are not attached. It is resent with Send by Email.
Their system — the shipment-closed callback to their web address and, for an EDI partner, the 945 (which today is generated but not delivered automatically). See Integrations.

A closed shipment: documents are printed and the email is resent from here.

8. Charges and the end of storage

Charge	How it is calculated	Condition
Outbound handling	On what was loaded: by catalog weight, by pallet or case (rounded up) or by piece. In a cross-dock, as cross-dock handling if the customer has it.	Only if the customer has it in their rate card.
Storage on shipping (the default mode)	Calendar days from the oldest arrival of what left up to the Actual ship-out date, minus free days, times the pallets shipped.	Customers not on daily accrual.
Daily storage	What was shipped stops counting from the next 2:00 run.	Customers on daily accrual.
Services on shipping	The customer's services set to be billed at departure.	—
Held accessorials	Those captured during loading enter the pool now, so they travel on the same invoice.	If the shipment is cancelled, they are not billed.

Everything lands in the unbilled services pool. See How charges are generated.

Important: backdating the Actual ship-out date trims storage-on-shipping, but it does not remove daily storage charges already generated on previous nights. If a daily-mode customer's goods left days before the shipment was closed, correct those charges before invoicing.

9. What the customer sees

Portal › Shipments — the shipment with its status (Draft, Confirmed, Reserved or partial, Loading, Shipped or Cancelled), the destination, carrier, tracking number and lines. They only see the documents they uploaded: the BOL and packing list do not appear in the portal.
Portal › Inventory — their stock, without what shipped.
Email — the shipment-shipped email.
Reports — the Daily Shipment List (Read Cargo Release Reports permission) excludes drafts and cancelled shipments; the customer inventory report counts what shipped.

Important: in a shipment with lines from several customers, the portal, the email and the callbacks to their system only reach the main customer (the one on the first line). Let the other customers know another way, or split the shipment.

Full example

Wednesday 16:20 — Valley Distributors orders from its portal 180 pieces of DV-300 and 12 cases of DV-410 for Thursday, ship to Central Warehousing. It arrives as draft SH-DVALLE-2026-00015 and the bell alerts the team.
16:45 — Ana López reviews it and clicks Confirm Shipment. 180 of DV-300 are allocated (from the lot expiring first, at A-03-02) and only 10 of the 12 cases of DV-410: it is partial.
Thursday 8:00 — An inbound with more DV-410 arrives. Ana releases the allocation and allocates again: now fully Reserved.
10:30 — The driver signs in as Pickup with his pickup number. Ana assigns Dock 6 and Luis Pérez, and links SH-DVALLE-2026-00015. The shipment takes the trailer and seal from the record.
10:40 — Luis starts: the shipment becomes Loading. He records 180 and 12, checks the required items with the seal and closed-doors photos, saves the loading and finishes with Yes, Release Dock.
11:30 — Ana closes with today as the Actual ship-out date. 180 pieces leave A-03-02 and 12 cases leave their locations; the BOL and packing list are generated; outbound handling and storage for what left are created (it arrived 41 days ago with 30 free days: 11 days for the pallets shipped); the email goes to the customer with the photos.
11:31 — In the portal, the customer sees the shipment Shipped and their inventory with 180 pieces and 12 cases fewer.

What can go wrong at each hand-off

Order → allocation: it stayed Confirmed with a yellow warning.

There was no available stock for the customer: the goods have not arrived, are blocked, expired or at a non-pickable location. Receive or fix it and allocate again.

Allocation → dock: the shipment does not appear for linking.

The job's customer is not one of the customers on the lines, or the shipment is already Shipped or Cancelled.

Dock → loading: the operator started and the shipment did not move to Loading.

It was in Draft, or it did not get linked. Confirm it and check the dock job card.

Loading → close: the operator cannot finish.

Required loading verification items or their photos are missing.

Loading → close: Close Shipment does not appear.

The shipment is not Reserved, Partial or Loading, or your user lacks the Ship (Close Shipments) permission.

The dock job was cancelled mid-loading.

The shipment goes back to its previous status and keeps its allocation, but it also keeps what the operator had already recorded as loaded. Check the quantities before loading again.

Close → documents: there is no BOL.

The warehouse has no BOL template. Create it and use Print Documents.

Close → customer: the email did not arrive.

Check recipients and channel in their Notifications tab and resend with Send by Email.

Good practices

Confirm as soon as the order is firm: allocation prevents promising the same goods twice.
Link the truck when assigning the dock, with the customer chosen.
Ask the operator to record the loading line by line, with the seal and photos, as it happens.
Before closing, compare what was allocated against what was picked on each line.
Close on the day the truck leaves; if not, backdate the Actual ship-out date.
Have the BOL and packing list templates ready before the first shipment.

Frequently asked questions

Why does a portal order arrive as a Draft?

So the warehouse reviews it before committing stock. Orders arriving through the API or EDI, on the other hand, come in confirmed and allocated, because they come from the customer's own system.

Can one truck take several shipments?

Yes. They are all linked to the same dock job and each one is closed separately. The truck's accessorials wait for the last one.

Can a close be undone?

No. After the close only general details can be corrected with Edit details. Goods that come back enter with a new receipt. See Cancel, release the allocation or return a shipment.

Why was no BOL generated on close?

Because the warehouse has no BOL template. Also, if someone printed the BOL before the close and no automatic one was generated, later prints reuse that copy, with pre-close data. Check the document's date.

The screen says FIFO; isn't it by expiry?

The message says FIFO, but allocation follows expiry: earliest expiry first and, on a tie or with no expiry, first in.