Glass Shipping Tracking: Ready-to-Ship List, Partial Shipping and Waybills

A pane leaving production does not mean the job is done. Knowing which panes are ready, loading the right vehicle, issuing the waybill and updating the order take as much effort as production itself. In this article we explain how glass shipping software brings order to ready-to-ship tracking, partial shipments and waybills.

The most common mix-ups in shipping

When shipping runs on paper lists or memory, the same problems keep coming back:

• While loading the truck you find out one pane of the order is still in the tempering furnace,
• Two vehicles go to the same customer on the same day and two separate waybills are written,
• Nobody knows how much of an order has been delivered; when the customer calls, the notebook comes out,
• Shipped glass reaches accounting late or incomplete.

The common cause is that shipping is kept separate from production and orders.

Ready-to-ship list: fully and partly ready

When production is tracked station by station, you already know which pane has left the last station. OGTOGLASS carries this onto the ready-to-ship list: orders appear on one list, separated by colour.

• Fully ready: every pane of the order has left production,
• Partly ready: some panes are ready, some are still at a station,
• Overdue: orders past their delivery date stand out.

Partial shipping: send what is ready

In a large insulated glass order a few panes may break or come back late from tempering. Rather than holding the whole order, sending the ready panes is often the right call. After a partial shipment the order moves to "partly shipped"; the remaining panes drop onto the same list once they leave production. "Has the rest of that order gone out?" is always answered on screen.

One delivery note per customer

Writing three waybills for three orders of the same dealer that are ready on the same day wastes time and confuses accounting. On the ready-to-ship list, orders of the same customer account are selected together and combined into a single delivery note. The truck is loaded once and one waybill is issued.

Region, vehicle, driver and waybill

The delivery note holds the shipping region, vehicle plate, driver and delivery address; the waybill is printed from it. The delivery notes list shows each note's region, quantity, m², amount and accounting status, so you can always find which vehicle took how much glass.

Order statuses update themselves

When a delivery note is saved nobody edits the order status by hand; the program sets the order to "partly shipped" or "shipped" based on the quantity shipped. The shipment and invoice movements of the selected order appear on their own tab in the order list. Delivery notes are then transferred to your accounting software, so the same information is never typed twice.

5 tips for organising shipping

1. Connect shipping to production. If ready-to-ship information does not come from the stations, the list is still kept by hand.
2. Agree on partial shipping rules. Decide in advance which customers may receive incomplete orders; the program tracks the rest anyway.
3. Define regions. Shipping regions make vehicle planning and later reports easier.
4. Check overdue orders every morning. Delays highlighted on the list are seen before the customer calls.
5. Watch the accounting status. The accounting status on the delivery notes list shows that no shipment is left uninvoiced.

Frequently asked questions