July 2024
Address fields
Additional fields have been made available on address records to capture email, phone, and code values, the latter being useful for aligning data records with external systems.
API
New fields available for some entities in the API to support exposing externalId's, phone numbers, consignee codes.
Consignment priority
The ability to set a priority on a consignment has been released. Choose from Low, Normal, or High.
Consignment priority affects the sort order of the consignments in the mobile application.
Default Full-Pallet-Pick behaviour
Organisation Settings now supports setting a default Full-Pallet-Pick behaviour when the items being added to a consignment come from a less-than-full-pallet pallet.
Choose to add the pallet quantity as loose items (to optionally palletise as part of the pick process) or as a full pallet pick.
Extended decimal places support
Various metric values in Consignly now support up to 6 decimal places.
Product dimensions
Dimensions (length, width, height) can optionally be nominated in the product master data. If dimensions are provided, the volume can be automatically calculated from these values.
Product-specific picking and receiving instructions
Product master data can support specific picking and receiving instructions. When picking or receiving that product, the product-specific instructions are surfaced up via the Warehouse app.
Stock rotation secondary sort
A new secondary sort option has been added to stock rotation settings on client and product master data records.
This secondary sort option allows organisations to keep like products together by introducing a secondary stock rotation option.
For example, suppose oldest expiry is the stock rotation. If different batches of product with the same expiry were received at various times, then an expiry first rotation may see different batches being suggested depending on when the inventory was received.
Using secondary sort on batch allows batch numbers to be kept together when allocating.
Warehouse location pickfaces
As part of a larger feature being developed in Consignly, pickface configuration is now available within the Warehouse Location management.
Configure a location as a pickface, nominate a minimum and target quantity, along with a product for the pickface.
Use the Pickface Replenishment report to discover pickfaces with product under the minimum quantity, and see how much product is required to be moved to the pickface to bring the quantity back up to the target quantity.
June 2024
API
An optional idempotency key can be provided when pushing a consignment import. Supplying this key will prevent consignment imports from being logged if a previous key exists within the organisation in Consignly already.
Useful if integrating partners wish to reject a duplicate import.
Hidden external Id's are now surfaced up in Partner and Consignment endpoints.
Consignment screen configuration
The consignment index screen (list view) can now be configured to show/hide fields, as well as to set the mode of the list from collapsed to expanded.
This allows you to customise the look of this view to include information that is important to you.
Consignment labels
Previously, dispatch labels only printed for products that were configured onto a pallet and consignment labels had to be printed separately for any loose items.
This update now supports printing auxiliary consignment labels at the same time as printing dispatch labels and ensures the numbering of the label parts matches.
e.g. suppose you have two pallets and some loose items.
You can now print all pallet labels (2 labels) and nominate 3 auxiliary labels for printing.
Consignly will print labels 1 of 5, 2 of 5 etc.
Inventory import
To align this import with other imports, the header of the CSV now presents validation requirements to the user (such as field length and whether the field is required).
Pending import queue
This queue now supports filters to allow users to find and filter for records in this queue.
The ability to delete all pending imports from the queue has now been limited to organisation owners.
Putaway function on mobile app
A dedicated putaway function is now available to beta testers on our mobile app. Look out for the general release soon.
Putaway allows you to scan a location and work on putting away product in that location to different locations in your warehouse more easily than by using inventory transfer.
It works best with scanner capability and palletised product.
The introduction of a new behaviour setting on the app allows the putaway to be auto-executed after a nominated period of time if all required information to support the putaway has been scanned.
Stock rotation
After stock rotation rules, a new setting on the client partner now determines whether Consignly will prefer depleting from locations or pallets that have a smaller number of items or a larger number of items.
May 2024
API
Additional fields are returned in some of the API endpoints to help organisations using our API to integrate systems.
Bulk update
Performance improvements around bulk updates have been applied, to ensure that updating hundreds of consignments at once is performant.
GRI's and decimal places
When performing a GRI on copying a rate card, users can now define the number of decimal places that the GRI should be rounded to.
Import reconciliation
Minor improvements have been made to the UX on the import reconciliation screen.
Wave Pick feature
Our wave pick feature has been released to our beta testers.
Bulk collection, and then picking to consignments is supported - along with parallel picking (tote picking).
Optimise your picks by choosing the consignments to wave pick for, then journey around the warehouse once to collect and pick everything to satisfy those consignments.
Warehouse app
- The ability to receive loose items onto a pallet has been implemented in the warehouse app.
- Improvements have been made to the location and SSCC scans in open dialogs.
- Better display of picked serials on outwards consignments.
- Compatibility for additional Zebra printers that support Bluetooth Classic printing.
- Pick screens now support wave pick jobs.
- When picking, the pick list in a consignment showed the products, tapping into a product would show the locations, then tapping into the location would allow you to pick. This approach has changed so that locations and products are listed directly in the pick list now and require only a single tap or scan to go into the item to pick it.
- This supports future functionality around defining specific pick sort orders.
March 2024
User experience changes
Consignly has been upgraded to the latest user-interface platform, ensuring compatibility with the most modern browsers. Slight user experience changes have been made as part of this, including introducing a border on all input fields to better differentiate between inputs and read-only text, as well as slight styling changes with regards to text and other minor layout tweaks.
Add inventory to an outwards consignment
When searching for a product in inventory, the products unit conversions can be used to find the appropriate quantity.
Suppose a product had a stocked unit of Items, a unit conversion for items to cartons, and cartons to virtual pallets.
Now you can request to search for 2 virtual pallets, or 3 cartons of inventory when adding to an outwards consignment.
Consignly will work out how many stocked items your requested quantity equates to and attempt to select that amount of inventory.
Automation
Added client partners to the automation index view to give visibility over the partners involved in this automation.
Bulk consignment status update
Additional filter options have been made available:
- Date entered
- Service Type
Furthermore, the charges information has been introduced into the search results so, if you have permission, you can see the value of any charges calculated on a consignment you are attempting to bulk update.
Consignment index
City now displays as subtext under the destination column to help identify the destination of the selected consignee.
Consignment receipt confirmation
A new receipt confirmation PDF has been made available within the consignment downloads. Use this to detail information about the consignment, the expected products/quantities, and the actual quantities received.
Consignment dispatch confirmation
A new dispatch confirmation PDF has been made available within the consignment downloads. Use this to detail information about the consignment, the expected products/quantities, and the actual quantities picked/dispatched.
Consignment POD
PODs attachments can be directly uploaded to an outwards consignment in the Consignly portal. Or a signature can be captured with a mouse.
Custom app / webhooks
New webhook options are now available for service type changes and POD changes on a consignment.
Dangerous Goods classes
Transport DG information is now surfaced up on the consignment pick/receive screens to help with labelling product for transport.
Dashboard - warehouse utilisation widget
The utilisation widget has been updated to support using Virtual Pallet capacity at a location, rather than whether there are any product sitting in that location.
For each location in a warehouse, define how many virtual pallets can fit at that location. Racking locations default to 1 virtual pallet.
Locations that don't have a virtual pallet capacity defined will not be included in this version of the utilisation widget.
Default dispatch location for a consignment
Warehouses can be configured to automatically set the default dispatch location on a consignment, depending on the destination address of the consignment. To configure, visit the Warehouse in the Organisation menu, and from the Locations tab choose the action menu to expose the configuration option.
Expected delivery date/time
For outwards consignments, an optional expected delivery date/time value is available to enter. This will be pushed through to any Freight iCOS Live integrations that are in use.
Inventory screen
Now shows information about different hold statuses that may be applied to a product.
Labels
Pallet, consignment, and dispatch labels have been tweaked to include larger barcodes and more information where appropriate.
Product master data
The requirement to supply a quantity per pallet on creation of a product definition has been removed.
Simply uncheck the box if you don't want to supply a quantity per pallet.
Note that this may impact the warehouse utilisation widget and the auto-palletisation feature if a quantity per pallet is not supplied.
Product transaction view
The transactions view from a product via the inventory screen has been improved to introduce a graph of running totals for inventory at that location.
Enhancements have also been made to support quick links to flick between transfer transactions when that product has been transferred from one location to another.
Receiving loose items to a pallet
It is now possible to receive loose items onto an existing pallet at a location. This functionality is available in the portal only but is coming to the mobile application soon.
Reports
Product filtering has been added to the Consignment Product Detail report.
Carrier is now a filter and a column in the Consignment Metrics report.
We've introduced a new report for Consignment Consumables and Consignment Tasks, allowing you to report on data supplied into consignments. This is useful if you wish to record equipment in and out of your warehouse.
Stock reports now include stocked unit, to provide context to the quantity values supplied in the report.
Warehouse activity tab
Some optimisations have been made to improve the load speed of the warehouse activity tab.
Warehouse hazard settings
A new area is available to define the signatory and an image of their signature. If supplied, the DG Declaration Form will be populated with this information.
Xero
Invoices that were pushed to Xero were never able to inherit the default due date that was set on the Xero contact as this was a limitation within Xero that we have now been able to work around.
As a result, the contacts default due date will be respected, and invoices can optionally be pushed in a submitted state directly to Xero.
Improved search function within Xero configuration, to better help deal with organisations that have large numbers of Xero contacts.
January 2024
Container information expanded
Additional fields now support capturing Container Seal Number, Tare Weight and Gross Weight.
These are surfaced up in Consignment PDF and Consignment Picking List.
The mobile warehouse application will show the Container Seal Number if available.
Critical Stock
Introduced a feature to product configuration that supports defining a threshold in days on date fields, in which that product will become considered critical stock.
Users can set up, for example, that a product will be considered critical if its expiry date is within 60 days of the current date.
Inventory that is considered Critical Stock will be surfaced up to users with warning icons in-app and in certain reports.
Hazardous Goods changes
Introduction of pH levels on product definitions.
Ability to set rules on a warehouse zone to include or exclude ranges of pH level products, as well choosing to allow/disallow products without a recorded pH.
Modification of Flash Point to be a text value in order to represent < and > signs within the flash point content.
Introduction of an optional • symbol at the start of the EAC code to denote alcohol resistant foam.
Inventory holds
A new feature to support applying holds to inventory items has been released. Hold inventory using one of the built-in hold statuses (General, QA, Return) which will put that inventory on hold - ensuring it cannot be used in outwards consignments.
Inventory can then be released to available when required.
Product configuration supports defining a particular hold status for inventory that is received into a warehouse. This helps support receiving goods into a warehouse that are immediately in a hold status.
Platform upgrades
Our engineers have been working hard behind the scenes to upgrade the core platform frameworks used to power Consignly. This work is regularly undertaken to ensure the security and performance of Consignly is maintained.
Transfer improvements
Improvements have been made to the transfer functionality in Consignly to better illustrate inventory that exists in different hold states at the time of transfer.
Users have the ability to consider which items they wish to transfer based on the hold states. For example, they may choose to transfer only available inventory but not inventory that has been committed to a consignment.
Transient locations
Consignly now better models items that have been picked from a location in Consignly by introducing the concept of Transient Locations.
The system-defined "In Pick" transient location is the first transient location being offered in Consignly. As product is picked from a location, it is transferred to a virtual "In Pick" location, to better reflect the fact that the inventory is no longer at the original location.
December 2023
Bulk unreceive
Introduced a feature on the receive screen to bulk unreceive a consignment. This will attempt to unreceive all product lines on the consignment.
If any product lines cannot be unreceived due to the product being transferred to a new location, or used on an outwards consignment, then these lines will remain as picked for you to handle differently.
November 2023
API
Add product group information to the PartnerProduct object in the API, and to the Product object in the Get Consignment endpoint.
Add Service Types object to the Get Consignment endpoint.
Consignment notes
Display on the consignment index (in compact or expanded mode) a label to indicate the number of notes on a consignment.
Consignment PDFs
Introduce the stocked unit label next to quantity fields on Consignment PDF and Picking List PDF.
Dynamic particulars - extend field support
Extended freight and activity charges to include support for reference number fields from the consignment to be used as dynamic particulars.
Pallet labels
Display an external pallet reference on pallet barcodes. The pallet reference is for informational purposes only and will not have a scannable barcode element.
Partner permissions
Provide support for partners to create origin addresses for inbound consignments.
Xero attachments
Expand attachment support when pushing Xero invoices to include the option not to attach a file.
October 2023
API
Expand consignment API to include warehouse information.
Add endpoint to support voiding a consignment.
Add endpoint to support getting a list of product attributes for the organisation.
Automation
Add support for revenue account and cost centre filtering when creating schedules via automation.
Bulk status update
Introduce a feature to support updating consignment statuses in bulk. Choose filter options to identify the consignments to update, choose the new status to update them to. Review the statuses that consignments will progress through before confirming the update.
Consignment consumables
Introduce consignment consumable support within the warehouse app.
Consignment label printing via warehouse app
Support printing consignment labels directly from the warehouse app to a connected/supported label printer.
Custom Apps
Enhance custom apps by supporting Client Credentials as well as Authorization Code access into a custom app.
Extended the custom app to support consignment triggers and webhooks, to allow custom integrations to have all their requirements bundled into the custom app.
Support for access into Consignly's API via Microsoft Azure Data Factory to support ETL transactions to data warehouses or external systems.
Introduce the ability to deactivate a custom app.
Import reconciliation
Improve performance when performing concurrent import reconciliations.
Substitution feature
Introduce substitution settings to Consignly. Configure a Client Partner or product with settings that determine whether the product can be substituted at the time of pick.
Xero integration
Surface up all Xero contacts when mapping Client Partners to contacts in Xero. This enhances support for Xero integrations where some contacts haven't been invoiced yet and therefore weren't considered customers.
Zapier
Support document attachments in Zapier so that source documents can be provided with a consignment import, and pulled into the consignment also.
September 2023
Automation
Support new dynamic field for End of Last Month within the automation feature.
Consignment consumables
Support for consumables on a consignment. Create consumable types, and then indicate how much was used on a consignment. Create charges via Rate Cards that are automatically raised for items consumed.
Inventory Totals widget
Introduce a new widget that displays inventory totals. Configure the widget based on warehouse, client, product and other properties, as well as choose the unit type to represent in the widget.
Reports
Add some missing data to the Excel version of some reports.
August 2023
2PL mode adjustments
Optimise some screens within Consignly where 2PL mode doesn't require some 3PL features.
API
Additional parameters added to some report API endpoints.
Batch label
Added product information to batch label.
Import reconciliation
When processing a pick request for a quantity of serialised items, Consignly will now automatically allocate serial numbers based on stock rotation, rather than requiring the serials to be specified.
Inventory transactions
Optimisations made on the inventory transactions screen to surface these transactions up faster.
Mobile application hardware support
Provide beta support for certain Cipherlab devices.
Zapier
Add service type code support to consignment import endpoints in Zapier.
Added reports to Zapier to allow people to build automations that deliver report data.
July 2023
Rate Card Management
Rate Cards are now available in Consignly for all organisations.
Rates have moved from Client Partners to Rate Cards owned by Client Partners.
Rates have moved from Carrier Partners to Rate Cards owned by Carrier Partners.
An improved rating engine helps support complex rating scenarios.
Get an introduction to the changes here, and learn more about rate cards here.
Service Types
Introduction of a service types feature that allows organisations to configure common services that are performed on a consignment.
Service Types can be used in conjunction with rate cards to support complex rating scenarios.
Unit Types
Unit Types are now defined at an organisation level, and enabled for partners by selecting them on and off on the Partner Record.
This allows Consignly to better support rating scenarios, as well as sets Consignly up for supporting ISO unit types in future.
An addition to include the ability to rate on Litres is available as a function of the cubic volume on a product/consignment.
Auto-calculate charges on consignment close
A new feature is available to configure the consignment to automatically calculate charges as the consignment is closed. This feature is controlled directly on the consignment but can be defaulted at the client partner level also.
Consignment charges on re-opening
Previously if a consignment is reopened, Consignly would refund and then re-issue charges on consignment close in order to capture any financial changes that may have taken place.
This update changes that behaviour so that as long as charges are not recalculated then refund/re-issue transactions will not take place.
Automations
Streamline your billing cycle by creating automations to raise and schedule transactions on a recurring schedule.
Support for reshaping product in the Warehouse App
The warehouse app has been updated to introduce the ability to make up pallets or reshape pallets of product on an inbound consignment.
The ability to create inbound product lines from the inwards consignment allows you to quickly add unexpected product to an inbound consignment on the fly.
Support for picking items to a pallet on outwards consignments is also available.
Printer support in the Warehouse App
The warehouse app gains support for Zebra printers on the same network as the device.
Configure the printers for your warehouse directly from the web portal, and have them available for use in the warehouse app.
Warehouse App users can also detect printers on the same network and add them to their app if the printers haven't been defined in the web portal.
Directly print labels from the Warehouse App by sending them to a configured printer.
Label improvements
Minor improvements to the rendering of labels have been completed.
Report data added to the API
The API has been extended to support the suite of reports available in Consignly. This functionality supports organisations using the API to build a data warehouse.
Import inventory auto-reconciliation
Adjustment to better reflect stock rotation methods.
Product import file changes
Improvements to the product definition import file has been made.
Users list added to Client Partner record
Depending on your permission, a list of users may be visible on the Client Partner to more easily see which clients have connected user accounts.
Picking list update
Weight and volume have been added to the serialised version of the picking list.
Webhook improvements
Additional webhook options are available to better trigger outside-of-Consignly workflows as events happen in Consignly.
May 2023
Consignly Connect
Consignly Connect is now available for all organisations. Invite other warehousing partners that use Consignly to your organisation and configure the connection to send or receive consignments between parties seamlessly.
Learn more about Consignly Connect.
Warehouse transfers
On the back of the Consignly Connect release, an internal connection is now available to all organisations, allowing organisations to dispatch product from one warehouse to another warehouse in their organisation.
Consignly will automatically create the inbound consignment into the receiving warehouse, to ease the process for the organisation.
Learn more about warehouse transfers.
Cross docking
Stage 1 of our cross docking feature is now available to eligible subscriptions or as an upgrade to your subscription if it's not automatically supported.
Contact us to request an upgrade.
The cross docking feature in Consignly allows you to create an outwards consignment from an inwards consignment, conveniently pre-loading common data fields on the outwards consignment as well as allowing you to select from product that has been received from the inwards consignment.
Cross dock an inwards to an outwards in-full, or create multiple outwards consignments from goods received on the inwards consignment as required.
Learn more about cross docking.
Camera support for warehouse app
An update to the mobile warehousing app has been released, opening up a beta feature that will enable camera scanning of barcodes.
Head to the Scanner Settings of the mobile app and turn on Camera Scanning.
When using the app, notice a barcode icon in the header of various screens. Tap it to turn on and off the camera scanning feature.
Camera scanning is currently an experimental feature, but we welcome feedback and look forward to seeing how it helps different organisations using Consignly.
NetSuite integration: additional custom fields
Additional Consignly fields are available for selection when mapping data from Consignly to custom fields in NetSuite.
Create origin address in address selector
Where appropriate and with the appropriate permissions, users can now create origin addresses from the address selector on Import Reconciliation or Inwards Consignment creation.
April 2023
Add quarantine items to an outwards consignment
There is a new permission that can be added to roles to allow a user creating an outwards consignment to use product from the Quarantine location.
This allows users to build an outwards consignment for sending of product back to the supplier, for example.
The permission is off by default and must be explicitly turned on in order to support this function, otherwise the usual controls of preventing quarantined product from being added remain in place.
When a user has this permission, a switch is available on the add inventory dialog allowing that user to switch between quarantined items and non-quarantined items.
Default arrival date/time
Inwards consignments now default the arrival date/time to the current date/time to ease creating inwards consignments quickly.
March 2023
Fastest / Slowest moving widget
A new widget to illustrate fastest/slowest moving inventory items out of your warehouse.
Location status report
A new report indicating the status of different locations in your warehouse, and whether they are occupied or empty.
M2X integration released
Integration with the M2X Transport Management Platform has been released and will soon be available to all orgnaisations.
NetSuite integration released
An integration with the NetSuite platform to push schedules as sales orders or invoices has been released.
Client / Carrier partner changes
Client partners and Carrier partners have been separated into new menu options, and schedules and transactions can now be managed directly from here.
Schedules can be generated in bulk, and draft schedules can be approved in bulk.
Warehouse sits in the Organisation menu now
Warehouses have been moved to the Organisation menu to make way for some new top-level menu options.
Product iconography
New iconography is in place to illustrate the difference between loose products and pallets (coming soon).
February 2023
Rates
Freight rates now support a consignment type to apply different rates for inwards vs outwards.
New attributes have been added to rates to support maximum charges and fees vs rate scenarios.
Product import template
An update has been made to support default visibility behaviour and free storage / stock rotation methods.
Warehouse restrictions
Users can now be restricted to specific warehouses, or granted access to all warehouses. Rate information will be read only if the rate applies to all warehouses but the user is restricted to a particular warehouse.
Product attribute adjustments
Attributes of a product, such as batch, dates, or custom attributes can now be changed on a product after it has been received into the warehouse. Visit the inventory screen and choose Adjust Attributes from the action menu.
This results in depleting inventory from the warehouse, and reintroducing inventory to the warehouse with the new attributes.
Additional reference numbers
PO, SO, Sender, and Receiver References have been added to consignments and various reports.
Additionally, attention fields for addresses can be set directly on a consignment.
Stocked unit information
Visibility over the stocked unit is now displayed on inventory and consignment screens, so users can see the stocked unit that the quantity values relate to for a product.
Schedule formatting
Client Partner financial settings now control whether a schedule is grouped by activity type or by consignment number.
This flows through to the PDF also.
Attachment to Xero Invoice
In the Xero configuration screen, users can now define the format of attachments to their invoices - whether it should be a PDF or an Excel document.
Picking instructions
A new picking instructions field is supported in the web portal, with support in the mobile app coming soon.
Reporting
New fields have been added to reporting to support additional reference numbers and product groups in various reports.
A new inventory balances report has been created to summarise inventory across the organisation.
Hazard information
Changes to the Hazard information on a product definition allow multiple hazard classes to be defined.
GS1 Barcode Support
This release includes some support for specific GS1 barcodes. This leads into our next release supporting stage 2 of our palletisation feature.
December 2022
Added dispatch / receive locations to a consignment
A default receive location can be set in the General card on a consignment. This will override the default inwards location when receiving product.
Additionally, the default dispatch location can be set to help your team gain visibility over where picked product for this consignment should be staged.
This change is the start of our dedicated receiving/dispatching locations feature that we'll be working on next year.
Dialog adjustments
Enhancements have been made to the web application's dialogs (pop ups that appear throughout the app) to better support iOS, and some older Android OS versions.
Picking list updates
The Picking List PDF has been updated to include information about the Transport DG Class (if relevant) as well as the dispatch location.
Single Sign On (SSO) for Microsoft company accounts
Consignly now supports SSO for Microsoft company-style accounts. Personal accounts are unsupported at this stage.
SSO allows you to sign on with your Microsoft account. If the email you've used for your Consignly account matches your Microsoft account email, then the link will be seamless.
If your Consignly organisation requires MFA and your Microsoft account supports MFA, then you won't be asked for your Consignly MFA code after logging in. If your Microsoft account is configured in a way that prevents Consignly from knowing it was MFA authorised, then there may still be a requirement for you to configure MFA on your Consignly account, too.
November 2022
Zebra Mobile App Support
An update has been made to the Consignly mobile app to support newer Zebra devices. Consignly will create a new profile in the Datawedge app to support listening for scan events on these Zebra devices.
Default time snapping
Arrival / Dispatch times on inwards/outwards consignments will now snap to the nearest 5 minutes when the date is set to today. Previously it would default to 9am, even if that time had already passed.
Updates to 2PL mode in Consignly
Further enhancements have been made to 2PL mode in Consignly to simply the user's experience when it comes to rating and other charging information for the organisation, as well as streamlining client selection.
Reporting updates
Changes have been made to the stock position and stock on hand reports around showing/hiding data relating to serials. Sometimes an organisation may want to know the total product available without breaking down that product by serial number.
Virtual pallet counts are now also included on the Consignment Metrics report.
Security settings card tweaked
The layout of the security settings inside the Organisation Settings security tab has been improved.
Stock Age report
The Stock Age report was introduced to provide organisations with information about when product was received, as well as when the free storage expires for any product.
Criteria options allow users to include time information on the received/free storage expiry columns within the report or not.
API endpoint additions
Additional API endpoints have been added to provide information around inventory levels as well as to allow Client Partners (with the appropriate permissions) to access approve schedules.
Industry selector on Client Partners
An industry selector has been added to Client Partners and is required when creating them. This is to help categorise the Client Partner and to allow Consignly to make helpful suggestions around features that might be relevant to clients within that Industry.
Print product barcodes from inwards consignment product lines
From an inwards consignment product line, an option now exists to print product barcodes instead of having to navigate to the product definition to do it.
Picking List enhancements
Weight and Volume information for each serialised item is now displayed on the picking list.
October 2022
Introduced consignment upload via import
Consignment data entry has been streamlined with the release of the consignment import feature.
Consignment information can be entered into a CSV file and imported into Consignly for reconciliation and creation. Missing or incorrect data can be manually resolved by the user before reconciling into a consignment in Consignly.
Multiple consignments of the same type can be entered into the same CSV file, allowing many consignments to be created at once.
Introduced inwards consignment product upload
For inwards consignments that have already been created, an import feature has been released that allows products to be appended to the inwards consignment via uploading of a CSV file.
This differs to the consignment import, where whole consignments and their product lines are created, instead allowing product lines to be appended to an inwards consignment that's already been created by a user.
Added optional zone property on hazard class limits for a warehouse
Zone information is being surfaced up on location selectors in the portal and the Warehouse App, to improve visibility of where the location sits within a warehouse.
Support for inter-warehouse location transfers via the web portal
Transfer of inventory from one location to another is no longer constrained to the same warehouse. From the portal, choose to transfer inventory to a location in an entirely different warehouse.
Additional field support for extra date fields on a product
To support our palletisation and GS1 barcoding features, additional information can now be configured on a Client Partner, and entered on product lines.
Support for additional date fields, such as production date and sell by date are available, and the stock rotation methods now support using these dates.
Consignment tasks
Common tasks performed on consignments can now be created as Task Types in Organisation Settings. Task counts can be recorded on consignments, and Client Partners can have rates created for specific task types in order to capture charges incurred when working with consignments (such as shrink wrapping or pallet re-stacking).
Merged address numbers and names into Street Address field
We've optimised the address storage to align better with third party systems by merging the address number and address name into a Street Address field.
This will help improve and optimise auto-reconciliation tasks within Consignly's import engine.
Moved profile into portal app
A user's profile has been moved from the identity management application into the main portal application, to improve the experience for users by keeping them within the most commonly used application.
September 2022
Dangerous Goods
Introduction of hazard classifications for Transport in addition to Storage.
Delivery Instructions
Delivery instructions are now available for Outwards Consignments and Point-to-point Consignments.
This information is passed onto TMS integrations that support it.
API changes
Updates to the API surface to enable expanded address information in support of auto-reconciliation and consignee creation features, as well as adding support for delivery instructions.
Expanded consignment payload to include picked, dispatched, received quantities and percentages in addition to requested values.
Duplicate consignments
Removed the container information that was being duplicated on the consignment.
Multi-factor authentication support
Consignly now supports multi-factor authentication on a user-by-user basis as well as supporting enforcement at the organisation level.
A user may opt in to MFA by visiting their profile and registering an MFA code on their device.
Organisation owners may enforce MFA for their organisation, which will mean any user (including Client Partners) connecting to their organisation will require MFA enabled on the user account.
This applies to warehouse users as well as web portal users.
Import auto-reconciliation
A new setting on the Client Partner allows auto-reconciliation for consignment imports.
If enabled for a Client Partner, consignments coming in via a Custom App or integration middleware (such as Zapier) will automatically be created as a consignment (bypassing the import reconciliation screen) if all the properties of the import are able to be matched/reconciled in Consignly.
If there is not enough product to send on an outwards consignment, or there are address details that are unknown, Consignly will still require a user to manually review and resolve the import first.
Automatic consignee creation
Enabling automatic consignee creation will see Consignly automatically create a consignee if all the information about the consignee is supplied in the import. That means the consignee name needs to be provided, as well as the address parts (including latitude and longitude).
This is useful for Zapier integrations with Shopify, when address information is captured by Shopify and can be passed through to Consignly via a Zap.
Web platform upgrade
Consignly's web platform has been given an upgrade behind the scenes.
Label text sizes for location labels
Consignly now intelligently changes the size of the text printed on location labels depending on the length of the label. This means short racking location labels will now print with larger text than before, increasing visibility.
August 2022
Dangerous Goods
Dangerous Goods Support for the New Zealand and Australian versions of the GHS7 standard have been released.
Organisation settings can be configured to indicate which standards are in support by your organisation, Warehouses can be set to adopt one of the available standards, and products can be configured to define their appropriate DG documentation and hazard classes.
Use dangerous goods features in conjunction with Zone Management to define rules that restrict products of certain classes into zones.
Zone management
Zone management support has been released, allowing organisations to define logical zones within a warehouse. Existing locations can be added or removed from zones, or use the location creation tool to set a zone at the time of location creation.
Advanced location creation
When creating multiple locations within Consignly, the advanced feature allows a more fine-grained approach to configuring the new locations.
Setting seed and step values allows you greater control over numbering sequences.
Expanded consignment search
We've added to our search capabilities for the consignment screen.
Advanced search introduces the ability to search on expected arrival or expected dispatch date, as well as by consignment type.
The search text field at the top of the blade supports a larger number of search options such as container number, vessel and voyage, reference numbers etc.
We've also introduced an icon to expand the search results window, allowing the consignment search results to fill the screen.
Consignment import
Integrations that feed consignments into Consignly currently surface those imports up via the Import menu item.
As imports are directly related to consignments, we've moved the feature from the menu and introduced an icon on the consignment search screen.
This icon shows a badge indicating how many consignments are awaiting action.
Tapping the icon will present the import queue side-by-side to the consignment list, so you can better see what requires attention.
July 2022
Shipping
The Containers card on a consignment has been renamed Shipping. Vessel and Voyage information can now be entered without having to specify container information.
Duplicating a consignment
From the action menu inside a consignment, users can now duplicate a consignment.
Duplicating a consignment will create a new consignment for the Client Partner with a copy of information from the General, Route, and Shipment cards.
Locations occupied
When choosing a location to receive product into via the portal or the Warehouse App, Consignly will now label locations that are occupied.
Feedback notifications in Warehouse App
Notifications have been added to the mobile app to provide feedback as actions take place.
New rate metric
A new rate metric has been added allowing "per consignment" charges to be resolved.
Product Group deactivation
Product Groups that were previously in use could not be removed. A new deactivation option has been added so that Product Groups can be deactivated and prevented from being used in new products. Existing products that have the product group can continue to use it.
Storage Analysis is out of beta
We're pleased to move the Storage Analysis business intelligence tool out of beta. Storage Analysis can be used to interrogate your warehouse's volumes using different metrics to help organisations understand their storage usage.
Schedule visibility for Client Partners
A new permission is available for Partner Roles that will allow partners to view approved schedules within Consignly.
Schedules will be displayed with the option to view on screen, as well as download a PDF or XLSX representation of them.
Void consignments is now controlled by a dedicated permission
Roles can be configured to choose whether users with the role have the ability to void a consignment.
This permission can be granted to Client Partners to allow them to void consignments themselves. Voiding consignments is only availble when the consignment meets certain criteria.
Learn more about voiding consignments.
Platform upgrade
Our engineers have been working hard behind the scenes to upgrade the core platform frameworks used to power Consignly. This work is regularly undertaken to ensure the security and performance of Consignly is maintained.
Create localities on-the-fly
When creating a freight rate, users with permission will now have the ability to create a new location on-the-fly.
When choosing a locality, tap the "New Locality..." item from the dropdown and you'll be presented with a dialog allowing you to configure the locality.
Picking list print options
When printing a picking list, you can choose to group the pick by location or by batch.
June 2022
Undispatch consignment products
Consignly now supports undispatching product that has been dispatched via an outwards consignment.
To undispatch product, move the consignment into a Ready to Dispatch status. Next, choose the action menu item and select undispatch. This allows you to in turn, unpick product that was previously dispatched.
Consignly gives visibility over both the pick percentage and dispatched percentage in this Ready to Dispatch status.
Consignee address creation for client partners
Client Partner roles have had a new permission added that can allow Client Partners to create on-the-fly consignees.
May 2022
Mobile Application updates
The Consignly warehouse app has been updated with a number of features, including MSDS support, inventory and location inquiry changes, better support of stock transfers, and other usability enhancements.
This application release is a required update, and old applications will present users with a message requiring them to upgrade to the latest version from the play store before being able to use the app.
Inventory screen
Changes made to the Consignly web portal include a new dedicated Inventory screen. This screen surfaces up inventory in your warehouses in one place.
Bulk add of inventory, inventory adjustments, transfers and quarantines have been uplifted from the Warehouse menu and moved into the Inventory menu.
Warehouse Transactions (formerly Warehouse Events) are accessible here too, and provides an accurate representation of what happened in your warehouse to arrive at the inventory balances you have currently recorded.
Warehouse transaction changes
Consignly has updated how warehouse events work behind the scenes. Events are now immutable, meaning that we capture events at a point in time for a particular event (such as a pick, or a dispatch).
This improves the traceability system within Consignly and supports the product's future by setting Consignly up for Cross-Docking, Automatic Backorder Allocations, and Automated Consignment Importing.
Xero configuration changes
The Xero configuration now supports recording separate line descriptions for each Revenue Account being mapped to a Xero Sales Account. This means invoices that have lines with different configurations for Sales Accounts and Cost Centres can describe the line better.
Point in time Stock on Hand and Stock Position reporting
The Warehouse transaction changes now allow Consignly to provide point in time reporting for Stock on Hand and Stock Position reports.
By default, these reports will run and display current stock, but you may also choose to run the report at a specific date and time. When running a report as at a date and time, the information displayed is what was recorded in Consignly at that date and time.
Stock rotation method enhancements
Updates to how stock can be rotated have been made. Product-level overrides can take place also.
There's now the ability to make batch and/or expiry required fields or optional fields at a product level.
Hercules integration
The Hercules integration for MOVe Logistics Group has been made available. Contact MOVe for a Account Code and a Service Code to be able to configure the integration.
December 2021
Consignly is now available in multiple countries
In 2022 Consignly plans to launch in multiple countries. Our team has worked hard to complete several feature updates to support this strategy including time zone management, currency formats and other supporting features.
Organisation settings
We've launched a Settings area for your organisation, Use this to keep your organisation information up-to-date.
As part of this feature, you can attach a logo, and set the Start of the week for your organisation. This is used to support the quick "this week", "last week" controls on some of Consignly's calculators (such as the storage calculator).
Learn more about organisation settings.
Warehouse switcher
Some organisations have warehouses that are very close to each other. The mobile app has always supported switching into different warehouses, but we've made the process easier by including a warehouse switcher on the dashboard and the menu.
Further enhancements are coming to make working in multiple warehouses easier.
Warehouse app permissions
We've been hard at work behind the scenes, building in extended permission support to the Warehouse App. Now Organisation Owners can modify roles to turn permissions on and off and the mobile app will show and hide features and functionality based on those permissions.
This will help organisations where their store-people are tasked with picking and receiving consignments, but not with marking them as completed.
Report permissions
We've introduced new permissions to Consignly to control access to the reports. Your Organisation Owner has access to roles in Consignly via the Organisation Settings menu.
Report access is controlled by turning the reports on or off for each role.
Learn more about permissions in Consignly.
Other news
Currently rolling out:
- Arrival time for inwards consignments is now supported
- Further in-app help articles
- API update to support product attributes on consignment imports
- Prompts when inviting a user outside of your organisation
- Summary screen when generating location to make you aware of how many are being generated
- Updates to the iCOS Live configuration screen
- Improved performance on the Xero configuration screen
November 2021
Help Centre Launch!
We've been hard at work compiling information to help you use Consignly, and are pleased to announce our Help Centre.
Use it to learn how to configure Consignly, as well as explore useful articles that help you make the most of Consignly.
Enhanced schedule and transaction management offers flexibility
Building on the investment we've made recently with rate management, we're rolling out enhancements to support transaction and schedule management.
We're introducing the ability to Void a transaction, removing it from the default view.
We're also rolling out Draft and Approved statuses for a schedule, allowing you to work with a schedule and it's transactions whilst in draft mode including adding transactions to an existing schedule, and offering the ability to remove a schedule.
Learn more about transactions and schedules.
Save time by automating schedule export to Xero
Many organisations use Xero to manage their accounting compliance. Schedules are created in Consignly and manually exported to Xero each billing period.
In conjunction with the schedule management features being released, we've enhanced the Xero integration to allow you to optionally set export triggers.
If configured, export triggers can allow a schedule to automatically export to Xero when the schedule moves into an Approved status.
Learn more about configuring export triggers and exporting to Xero.
In-App Help
Coinciding with the launch of our Help Centre, Consignly is now pleased to offer In-App help.
Access help via the icon in the app header. This will launch a sidebar that contains a link to the help centre, access to tutorial videos, recommended articles, and the ability to log a support ticket all within the app.
Additionally, you may start to see help icons embedded into parts of the application that may be used to offer assistance on that particular feature via the help sidebar.
Going Global
We're busy behind the scenes building international support for Consignly to continue our efforts to move into other jurisdictions.
Starting with settings that offer locale and time zone selection, Consignly will support varying number/date formatting in the application.
Other news
Currently rolling out:
- API enhancements to support additional schedule management
- Further in-app help articles
- Product attributes added to picking and consignment PDFs
- Reports now have their own permissions, giving you the ability to choose exactly what reports are available on which roles
October 2021
More flexibility with charges by introducing Unit Conversions
Often organisations will move products within a warehouse in packs (such as pallets), and sometimes they'll be moved as loose items.
Organisations may charge a different rate for activity on loose items compared to packs, as the loose items might be more difficult or cumbersome to move around. That's why we're introducing Unit Conversions into Consignly.
Unit Conversions allow products to be defined with specific conversions into different pack sizes. Those unit conversions can be enabled for use on Consignment Metrics or Storage Metrics with various options to control how the conversions contribute to those metric areas.
Dispatch consignments and capture a POD directly from the warehousing app
Many organisations have customers that come to store to pick up product. The warehousing app has always allowed for a Proof of Delivery to be captured on an Outwards consignment, providing it is in a Ready to Pick state.
This often impacted the organisation's KPI's, because consignments were staying in a Ready to Pick state for a long time. It also impacted the organisation's workflow, because consignments remained in the Ready to Pick list even when they had already been picked.
We're pleased to announce that the warehouse app will soon support capturing a POD and photos for consignments in a Ready to Dispatch state.
This means your warehouse can follow your normal pick/dispatch process - moving the consignment to a Ready to Dispatch state after picking and therefore removing the consignment from the Ready to Pick screen.
When the customer arrives to pick up the goods, a signature can still be captured along with photos if necessary.
Store additional information on inwards products using Product Attributes
The Product Attributes feature in Consignly has been beta tested by selected customers and has now been generally released.
Product Attributes can be turned on for Client Partners. When creating Inwards consignments for these partners, you can optionally add attributes to the inwards consignment lines.
Attributes may be used to hold additional information, such as a second batch number, or another quality of the product you are bringing in, such as colour or style.
Product attributes can then be used to find product in your warehouse when selecting product for outwards consignments.
Curated tutorial videos
Consignly has a large number of tutorial videos to help illustrate how to use different parts of Consignly.
Those videos are now curated based on what's relevant to you, to make getting access to information even easier.
With the new tutorial release, you can now search and filter videos to help find specific topics, and a full-screen mode has been introduced so you can watch the video using your entire screen.
New integrations are coming
Customers using GoSweetSpot to effect their courier requests will benefit from the new GoSweetSpot integration.
We're proud to be partnering with Flow Software on establishing an integration pathway directly into Consignly. We will announce the integration when it becomes available in the very near future.
Enhancements have been made to the iCOS Live integration to better support commodities. Products within Consignly can now have commodity information entered against them, and the iCOS Live configuration supports commodity mapping for containers.
Other news
Currently rolling out:
- API enhancements to allow third parties access to Client Partner schedules
- In-app help articles to aid in describing particularly advanced features within Consignly
- Watch out for an announcement about our Help Centre - coming soon!
September 2021
Improve your accounting compliance with Tax Types, Revenue Accounts, and Cost Centres
Many large organisations code and categorise their revenue, and that's why we're introducing Tax Types, along with Revenue Accounts and Cost Centres into Consignly.
Revenue Accounts can be linked to Activity Charge Types, and Cost Centres to Warehouses.
When creating a rate, Tax Rates, Revenue Accounts and Cost Centres can be set to flow through to the Schedule.
When configuring your Xero connection, Revenue Accounts in Consignly can be mapped to Revenue Accounts in Xero, and Cost Centre Codes in Consignly can be mapped to Tracking Categories in Xero.
Pushing your Schedules to Xero will ensure that all your transactions are categorised and assigned correctly.
Further enhancements have been made to the Schedule PDF, and a new option to download a spreadsheet is available.
Revenue Accounts and Cost Centres: rolling out to Enterprise Consignly subscriptions over the coming weeks.
Tax Types and schedule enhancements: currently rolling out to all Consignly subscriptions.
Customise your charges using dynamic particulars & raise storage charges per product
Rates now also support dynamic particulars. You can use tokens in your particulars to better describe the transaction, and pull through appropriate information at the time the charge is raised.
We're also releasing a feature in Storage Rates supporting you to calculate and raise transactions per product. This provides a finer level of detail in your charges. When used with dynamic particulars, your transaction can describe the product that storage is for.
Dynamic particulars: currently rolling out to all Consignly subscriptions.
Support for opening PDFs in the Warehouse app.
Many organisations using Consignly deal with MPI and Customs, requiring warehouse personnel to have ready access to documentation attached to the consignment.
The Consignly Warehouse App supports opening the PDFs in-app to ease this process.
PDF support: currently rolling out to all Consignly subscriptions.
Other news
Currently rolling out to all Consignly subscriptions:
- enhanced permissions to control consignment management
- improvements to product adjustments
- support for decimal values on a product definition's quantity per pallet field
- ability to deactivate consignees, warehouses, locations
- improvements to location search
- addition of container number search on the warehouse app
- picking list PDF: specifically designed to support picking by location
July 2021
Voiding consignments
Sometimes you just need to cancel a consignment as though it never existed.
Consignments that need to be discarded can now be voided. Voiding a consignment is possible if there aren't any product lines that have been picked or received. Voiding a consignment will remove it from your Open Consignments list.
Business Intelligence Tool for Storage
We're gradually rolling out a BI storage intelligence tool for Advanced Consignly subscriptions. This allows you to analyse your storage looking at different metrics and count methods and comparison metrics, too.
Product Attributes
We're gradually rolling out the ability for consignments to be tagged with product attributes. This lets you give products additional information, such as a second batch number, or allows you to tag a product on an inwards order with something (such as if there were damages).
Closing Consignments
In the rush to get things done, we've noticed that consignments are being closed without charges being raised on the consignment. Although Consignly warns you about this, it's easy to skip over the warning and close the consignment.
This impacts revenue and so the Close Consignment dialog has been changed to help make it clearer when charges aren't being raised. For consignments that have no charges calculated, a box must be checked to enable the consignment to be closed first.
Other news
- Tweaks have been made to the quarantine products feature
- A new code field is optionally available on activity types. This will eventually be surfaced up in transaction schedules.
- The mobile app now supports searching consignments via the reference number
- If there are no products added to a consignment, you are now able to change the warehouse that product will be searched/picked from.
- Partner codes now support up to 20 characters