This article covers how to create and process an inwards consignment. This process includes adding products, receiving products, receiving and returning containers, calculating charges and closing a consignment.

Deep dive into Inwards Consignments here.

Creating an Inwards Consignment

Consignments are created and managed in the Consignments menu.

To create a new consignment click this will give you the option to create an Outwards, Inwards or Point to Point consignment.

Select Inwards Consignment.
You can now enter the consignment details beginning with the client. When you enter this field you will be presented with a list of recent Client Partners to select from, you can also start typing their name to refine the options.

Provide a reference number and the date entered - this will default as today's date and you change this with the calendar if required.

Next, enter the expected arrival date. Under 'Route', you can select your carrier and carrier reference if it is applicable.

Select the route for this inwards consignment. Clicking in the Origin field will provide you with a list of origin addresses for this Client Partner.

You can also add an ad-hoc address if required - this will present you with a new card to add the address details. The address will then appear as an ad-hoc address that you can select for any future consignments across all client partners.

Select your warehouse address in the destination field. You can now see a map of the inwards consignment route.

Shipping information, such as vessel and voyage can be entered in the container / shipping card. If this consignment has a container, you may enter the container information. You can complete the receive and return dates for the container once these have taken place.

You can also set a container yard and delivery reference if appropriate.

This information helps feed dashboard widgets that show you containers due soon, as well as containers that might be close to or are currently in detention.

When you are happy with the details click Create Consignment. You can now add the product details you are expecting to receive in this inwards consignment.

Adding Products

The Products card will default to Edit mode, allowing you to enter products for this client partner.

Learn more about adding products to an inwards consignment.

Enter the Quantity. You can also enter a batch number, expiry and attributes if available and required.

Volume and Weight will be calculated automatically based on what Consignly already knows about the product - you can update these fields if necessary.

If you clicked the serial numbers option when creating this product type in the products section of the client partner, you will need to add serial numbers here. Paste a list of serial numbers into the serial field and Consignly will automatically create the serial lines for you.

You can enter additional products by pressing the Add Product button. You can press the action menu icon at the end of the row and choose to Copy Product to duplicate the row.

When you have entered details for all the products, click Save Changes.

Your consignment has now been created.

Entering other information

After the consignment is created, Consignly will navigate to the consignment detail view.

The top of the consignment display several tabs that take you to other related things on a consignment, such as notes, charges, history, etc.

The Detail tab includes several cards. The first one is General consignment information, this includes general information about the consignment, including number, reference and expected arrival.

The Route card, shows the origin and destination for this consignment with both a map and addresses, as well as shipping information.

The Status card shows the current consignment status. For a new inwards consignment this will show as pending.

Metrics details the weight, volume and quantity for this consignment.

Charges is where you can calculate the freight incurred, freight charged and activity charges for this consignment based on those already entered in Consignly.

Receiving the Consignment

Once you have confirmed that all details are correct and you are ready to receive your consignment, you can change your status to 'Ready to Receive' by clicking on the status.

If you take a look at the dashboard you can now see that any containers on the consignment are listed under 'Containers Due' - with details on the size, container and consignment number and the ETA. Consignly will track your containers from expected arrival, to devanning and return.

Dashboard widgets can provide you with a list of all containers which are due and in store, keeping track of how many days remain until you reach the detention period. Once the container arrives it can be logged as received and devanned.

Clicking on the container information directly from the dashboard widget will open the corresponding consignment.

Receiving Containers & Products

To log the container as received, go into the consignment and find the Shipping card, click Edit Shipping and enter a received date for the container.
If applicable, add a delivery reference. Then click Save Changes.

Once your consignment status has been changed to 'Ready to Receive' an option to Receive the products will become available. Click on Receive to receive products. You will then be able to see a list of all the products that you are expecting to receive in the consignment.

The percentage indicator shows the percentage that has already been logged as received. Tick the items that are being received. Expand the line if you need to specify a quantity received that is not what is expected.

When you're ready to receive all the ticked items, choose Receive Selected. Consignly will present you with a dialog allowing you to indicate the location that items will be received. At this point Consignly will let you set the date and time that the products were received.

This information will impact your storage calculations, so make sure you choose the right date and time. Consignly will default to the current date/time.

Back on the Dashboard any containers on the consignment will now show in the 'Container in Store' widget; including the number of days left until the detention period for return.

Once the container has been returned, you can enter the return date in the Container Details, remembering to click Save Changes.

Completing the consignment

Now you can change the consignment status to 'Complete'.

To calculate freight and handling charges for this consignment click Calculate All in the Charges section.

Here you can calculate any freight incurred, freight to be charged and activity charges. Consignly will calculate these charges automatically, based on the freight and activity rates entered for the Client Partner and any freight rates for your Carrier Partner; if applicable.

To get better visibility of the charges being raised, you can navigate to the Charges tab, which shows a break down of all charges calculated.

An ad-hoc charge can be created here for any of these charge types.

The freight margin for this consignment will be displayed and if this falls below the specified threshold as defined on the Client Partner settings, Consignly will highlight the freight margin details in red.

Activity charges will also be listed individually in this section once calculated.

Closing the consignment

When you are ready to close and raise charges for the consignment, change the status to 'Closed'.

This will present you with a summary of the charges that will be raised. If you have not calculated any charges yet, you may do so at this point.

Enter the date that you want to raise the transactions for. Consignly will default the date to today.

The consignment status will then change to 'Closed'. This consignment will no longer show in the consignments list unless we modify the search filter to include 'Closed' consignments.

The charges for this consignment will now appear in the Client Partner's Transactions list.

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