1. INTRODUCTION
When the order volumes grow, there are greater chances of human errors while packing & shipping orders. Often wrong or incorrect number of items are shipped to clients. In order to battle this, we have built a ‘Scan & Print’ feature in Browntape, which allows the user to scan an item barcode, print corresponding documents (invoice, shipping label, VAT forms, declaration, etc.), pack that item and then move on to the next item. This greatly reduces chances of errors.
2. BEFORE YOU START SCANNING
In order to maximize the efficiency of operation, it is best to process your orders in advance, before you start scanning items. This will fetch the labels and invoices from the marketplaces. (Note: This will happen for all channels where no further info like dimensions, pickup time, etc. is required to process the orders to get the details).
All the labels get fetched in Browntape in a few minutes depending on the load and response time from the MPs. It is recommended that once the labels for all the orders have been fetched, you start your scan & pack process.
It is possible to scan items without doing the above, but scanning and packing will be much faster with the labels & invoices already fetched.
It is assumed that the items have been picked from the warehouse before the scan process is started.
3. GETTING STARTED WITH SCAN
- To access the scan and print feature, hover on the ‘Orders’ tab in the left navigation and select ‘Scan & Print’ (Fourth option as shown below).
- The following screen will appear with Scan Options:
Select whether you are scanning for Marketplace-Shipped orders or Self- Shipped orders, select the Channel(Flipkart, Amazon, Magento, etc.) that you are scanning for, and click on ‘Start Scanning’. - The above action will start the Scan Session and open the Scan Bar along with the Scan Window at the bottom of the screen with the focus on the Scan Box. Notice that in the background (under the overlay), Status Tabs will start showing up (Packing, Partially Scanned, Fetching Info, etc.). The count next to each status shows the count of orders under that status.
- ALL SET! You are now all set to start scanning your items using their barcodes. As you scan the item, the system will search through the pending orders and bring up the orders as per the rules mentioned in the section titled SCOPE & PRIORITY OF ORDERS TO PICK.
4. SCANNING ITEMS
Follow these steps to start scanning:
- Scan an item barcode (assuming the focus is on the Scan Bar input field).
- An order for that item will be picked from the pending orders list. For a single-item order, the order status will update to ‘Order Complete’ in the Scan Window as there was only one item to scan (shown below).
- When the order scan is complete, the printing of invoices and labels will launch automatically in a new browser tab. [Note: Ensure that the pop-ups from Browntape are not blocked in your browser. If so, you will see ‘pop-up blocked’ icon on the right side of the URL bar in the browser. Click on that to allow popups from Browntape.com. To manually launch the print, you can also click on the ‘Print’ button on the right side of Scan Status Bar.]
Printing an item moves the order to ‘Packed’ status
- Close the print window, the focus will come back to the Scan Bar.
- Scan another item, and so on.
- Once your scanning is complete, click on the minimise button on the right side of the Scan Bar, and click on ‘Done’ on the top right corner of the page (shown below):
This will end the Scan Session.[Note: All the scanned info will be lost after ending the session. The orders that have been printed once will be marked as ‘Packed’ and will not be considered for scanning next time.]
5. MULTI-ITEM OR MULTI-QUANTITY ORDERS
An order containing multiple quantities of a single item or multiple items, can be scanned either all at once or in parts. Follow these steps:
- Scan an item.
- It brings back a multi-item order. The Scan Status Bar will show as ‘Order Scan Incomplete’ (below).
- Next, you will need to scan one of the remaining item(s) from that order. If you pick and scan an item other than one of the remaining items, then the Stauts Bar will show ‘Invalid Item’ (below).
- In case you don’t have the other items from the order handy, you can click on ‘Complete it Later’ (above). This will add the order to ‘Partially Scanned’ tab (shown below). At a later point, when you scan an item from this order, the order will be brought back to the Scan Window. If it gets completed with this latest scan, then the invoice and label print will launch.
6. NON PRE-FETCHED ORDERS
In the section titled ‘BEFORE YOU START SCANNING’ we mentioned that it is best to pre-fetch all labels before you start scanning. However if you don’t do that step, you can still process the orders with scan as follows:
- Scan an item.
- An order is picked which does not have labels ready. If all items of the order are scanned, the label fetch call will be triggered and the status will change to ‘Fetching Info’.
- At this point you may either wait for the label of this order to be fetched and printed, or you may continue scanning another item, which will pick another order and you can start packing that order if the labels for that are ready. The earlier order will automatically move to ‘Label Ready’ tab once the labels have been fetched from the Marketplace. You may then click on the ‘Label Ready’ tab, then click on the order to print and pack it.
7. UNMAPPED ITEMS IN MULTI-ITEM ORDERS
As noted earlier, single-item unmapped orders are ignored from the scope of order being picked by the system. However, orders with multiple items, where the scanned item is mapped but some other items are unmapped will still be picked by the system. For such orders, items will need to be mapped in order to complete the order via scanning. Follow these steps:
- Scan an item.
- A multi-item order is fetched with some unmapped items.
- Click on ‘Map SKU’ button (as below).
You will be taken to the order details page for that order in a new browser tab. Map all the unmapped SKUs in the order on that page. - Close the order browser tab to come back to the scan session window.
- Click on the ‘Rescan Order’ button (as below) on the Scan Status Bar.
This will remove the said order from the current Scan Session. Rescan the item, the system will refetch the same order again (unless some other scan user does it before you). Now when the order appears, it will show as all items being mapped. - Continue to scan other items in the order to complete the order and print.
8. MULTI-USER SCANNING
When two or more people perform the scan & print function in parallel, it is imperative that they do not get the same orders, otherwise duplicate orders will get shipped. To enable parallel processing, when an item is scanned by one user, the order which is picked (based on rules mentioned in section titled SCOPE & PRIORITY OF ORDERS TO PICK), the order gets locked in the system to that user for that Scan Session.
A user must click on ‘Done’ on the top right of the page in order to release all the locked orders for his Scan Session otherwise they will not be scannable by anyone else. This will release the locks on any/all partially scanned orders that have not been printed/packed.
Note: Sometimes it may happen that a user does not close his session properly and some order get locked and remain locked. These will be prevented from being printed by any other user. For such instances, there is an options under Settings > Scan & Print Setting called ‘Clear Scan Sessions’ (as shown below). This will manually release ALL locked orders to be scanned again.
Caution: This may release the orders from currently on scan sessions as well. So make sure that no scan & pack session is going on when you click this.
9. BARCODES SUPPORTED FOR SCANNING
- SKU Code & SKU Alias (could be marketplace SKU)
- IAN: International Article Number
- EAN: European Article Number
- UPC: Universal Product Code
- ISBN: International Standard Book Number (used for coding of books).
10. SCOPE & PRIORITY OF ORDERS TO PICK
1. Scope
When an item is scanned, the system searches for orders that contain the scanned item. Orders with the following statuses are considered in the scope of such a search:
- ‘Packing’
- ‘Ready To Ship’
Note: Single-item orders that contain an unmapped item are not considered in the scope of search. You will need to first map the SKUs, only then will those orders be scannable. (Multi-quantity and multi-item orders with some unmapped items come into scan but will not be completable. So make sure that for all your orders in ‘packing’ and ‘Ready to Ship’ statuses have mapped items before you start scanning).
2. Priority
Orders are searched in a FIFO (First In First Out) manner, that is, the oldest orders are given the first preference while scanning items.
Note: The following special types of orders are given a higher preference than FIFO:
- Partially scanned order (shown on screen): An order that appeared in the Scan Window due the first item that was scanned.
- Label Ready Orders: Orders for which labels have been fetched in the background and are ready to be printed.
- Partially Scanned Orders (in background): Orders that have some items unscanned and were marked as ‘Complete it Later’. When an item is scanned that is contained in one of these orders, those will be picked first.
11. ORDER SCAN STATUSES
- Order Complete: When all the items in an order are scanned and the labels are ready to the printed. (For Self-shipped, this is always true).
- Order Scan Incomplete: When some items from an order remain to be scanned.
- Invalid Item Scanned: When a multi-item order is picked and the subsequent item scanned is not contained in that order.
- Fetching Info: When all the items of an order are scanned, and the label fetch is triggered from the relevant marketplace.
- Order Contains Unmapped Items: When a multi-item order is picked which has some items that are not mapped to any SKUs in Browntape. These orders cannot be completed unless the items are mapped.
Note: All Myntra orders are scannable under the 'Self-shipped' option as of now.