Packing into boxes

Marking an order as packed records that it left the building. Which box each piece went into is a separate question, and it is the one a carrier bills against. This page describes the bench that answers it.

Switching it on

The guided station appears only when all four of the following settings are in place. None of them is optional, because a current box has no meaning without them.

Setting	Value	Where
Marking mode	Select packed products	Settings → Packing → Order Picking
View mode	one order at a time	Settings → Packing → Order Picking
Manage parcels while packing	on	Settings → Packing → Order Picking
Guide the packer box by box	Guided	Settings → Packing → Order Picking

Add Order completion behaviour → automatically advance on the Barcode Scanner tab for a bench that also moves to the next order automatically.

The station

One box at a time, with its contents, its weight against the target weight, and the action that closes it. The strip of positions across the top states how many boxes the order comes to and which one is open.

The weight chip turns red when the box exceeds what the split assigned to it. This is an indication, not a refusal: the packer can see the goods and the split cannot.

What a scan means

The scanner behaves as a keyboard: characters, then Enter. Three vocabularies are distinguished by the prefix:

Code	Meaning
ORD-…	an order, from the packing sheet Stockly prints
BOX-…	a packaging material, from the label sheet by the bench
anything else	an article — EAN or manufacturer number

The prefixes cannot occur on an EAN, so a prefixed code is never interpreted as an article. A bare number is tried as an article first and only then as an order, because an invoice printed by other software carries an order number with no prefix and with the same shape as a product code.

A carton scan is two gestures in one

The open box	What BOX-… does
empty	records which carton it is — and each further scan replaces it
holds something	closes it and opens the next box with the scanned carton on it

Swapping the carton while the box is empty also changes the tare and the target weight and re-arranges the contents. It is refused only once the parcel has a tracking code, because that shipment was declared to the carrier with dimensions of its own.

Caution

The first scanned article ends the swap. From then on the same code means “close this box, open the next one”, so a carton picked up by mistake has to be corrected on screen: in the carton field of the closing prompt, or in the picker in the corrections panel.

A whole order, without touching the screen

With the settings above, a printed packing sheet and the carton label sheet on the wall:

1. Scan ORD-… — the order is brought to the front and its box plan is loaded automatically.

2. Scan the label of the carton taken from the shelf — box 1 is empty, so this only records which carton it is.

3. Scan the articles. Every piece is recorded as it goes in, so a second bench and a page refresh show the same box. In quantity mode the counter closes itself when the count is reached.

4. Scan the second carton’s label — box 1 closes and box 2 opens with the scanned carton. If the split did not plan a second box, one is added.

5. Scan the rest of the articles.

6. Close the last box. By default the last scan does not finish the order automatically: the closing dialogue opens on the box still standing open, because that box holds goods and has no weight, no label and no booking yet. Once it is confirmed, the order’s state changes without a further prompt, the shipping layer is informed that the order is packed, and the operation closes: it returns to the operations list when it was opened as a page, or the window closes when it came from the order list. Cancelling the dialogue finishes nothing and changes nothing; the order stays open and Next still works.

   Set Confirming a box the system closes to ask only when something is missing and this step is omitted as well: the last box closes on its estimated weight, and step 6 is then not required.

Interruptions are also resolved by scanning. The message that the box is over its weight disappears with the next article scan, and an article planned for a different box produces a message rather than a refusal.

Note

A run does not finish while a box is open with goods in it. Order completeness is counted from scans, and a scan puts a piece in a box, so an order can be fully scanned while its last carton stands open on the bench. If the run were finished at that moment, the goods would be packed while the shipment would not exist: the box would stay planned, with no weight, no tracking code and nothing booked with the carrier.

Whether that box is presented for confirmation or closed automatically is a setting of the shop; see How much is asked below. In both cases it is closed before the run finishes; what differs is whether anybody is asked about it.

An empty open box does not block anything. An empty parcel is not a shipment, there is nothing to weigh, and the station does not close one.

The closing dialogue is also where the weighed weight is entered. A box closed by a carton scan carries the estimate from the split; if the carrier bills on real weight, the figure from the scale is entered here.

How much is asked

Benches differ: one has a scale and enters the real weight on every box, another has a scanner and no scale and processes a whole order without the screen being touched. Two settings on Packing → Order Picking determine this, and they answer different questions.

Confirming a box the system closes governs the closings that were not triggered by a button:

	a box fills up	a carton scan closes a box	the last box of the run
Always ask	dialogue	dialogue	dialogue
When something is missing, and at the last box (default)	closes quietly	closes quietly	dialogue
Only when something is missing	closes quietly	closes quietly	closes quietly

A box fills up when it holds everything the split assigned to it. Guided packing works box by box, so this is a completed step: the carton closes, the next one opens, and scanning continues. It requires a split that states what goes in which box; with a bare parcel count there is no full box, and nothing closes automatically.

The middle and the bottom row differ in one respect: whether the run stops at its final box. That is also the difference between hands-free operation up to the last box and hands-free operation from end to end.

Close parcel opens the closing dialogue governs the button, and only the button. It is not governed by the setting above, because it is the only route to a weight read off a scale: a bench that has a scale keeps it enabled regardless of the automatic closings. Switched off, the button closes the box immediately on the estimate.

Caution

A box short of what it was measured for opens the dialogue in every combination of the two settings, with the error sound. Closing a carton freezes the layout of every box after it, so a missing piece cannot be corrected at this bench afterwards.

Both settings belong to guided packing, so they have no effect unless Manage parcels while packing is on, Guide the packer box by box is set to Guided, and its own two conditions are met: Select packed products together with Display one order at a time.

Closing a box that is not full

Close parcel asks for the weight and the carton, and displays the box as cards with photographs, one card per piece, because a box holds pieces and a packer checking a carton counts objects, not fractions. A photograph is recognised faster than a name, which matters at a bench where a carton obstructs the view.

Every card carries its answer twice: a green frame and a tick for a piece that is in the box, a red frame and a mark for a piece the box was measured for and does not hold. The frame is visible from a distance, the corner mark at close range. The reason is written once above the cards, and the button then reads Close anyway. Nothing is refused: a piece that turned out to be damaged, or one an operator has decided to send separately, is a decision the bench is allowed to make.

This matters at the box, not only at the end of the order, because taping a carton shut freezes the layout: whatever was measured into it has to go into another box afterwards, and boxes are chosen by what fits.

A carton scan is held to the same rule. Scanning the next box normally closes the current one without a prompt, which is the purpose of the hands-free flow, but not when the box is short of what it was measured for. In that case the scan opens this same prompt, and the sound is the error sound rather than the accept sound, so the packer is informed before looking up. The scan is not discarded: confirming closes this box and opens the next one carrying the carton that was scanned, exactly as the scan intended.

On the last box the consequence is greater, because the pieces would not be in any parcel at all, and the dialogue states that instead.

Moving goods between boxes

Action	What it does
drag a piece on the table	puts it where it was dropped, pulled tight to the walls and its neighbours, and keeps it there
Recalculate layout	re-draws the inside of every open box — it moves nothing between them
Move the rest	moves what this box was still planned to hold into the boxes that have room
Add a parcel	one more box, its carton chosen from whatever has nowhere to go

Move the rest is offered when a box reaches its weight and the split still expects more of the order to go into it. It moves only pieces that nobody has packed, pinned in place or set aside — three ways of stating that a person decided it. Room is judged twice: against the carrier’s ceiling for that carton, and against an arrangement that actually holds. Volume on its own only states that the goods could fit.

When no box will take the remainder, one more box is opened; if that box will not hold the goods either, it is removed again and the message states this. The result is always reported: how many pieces went where, whether a box was opened, how many are stranded and why, including the case in which nothing had to move.

The packing table

The picture of the bench, in 3D. Switch it on with Show the packing table; What the packing table shows selects the labelling on it — box numbers, inner measurements, weights, and the open flaps of the box being filled.

Two views sit on the tool strip down the left edge and are selected automatically the first time a split is calculated: up to three boxes the whole bench, and above that one position at a time.

View	Behaviour
the whole bench	every position on screen at once
one box at a time	the box being filled; the rest are reached by moving along the row

Boxes keep their proportions in both views, and so does everything written on them. Drag to rotate the picture, use the wheel to zoom in, and use the right button (or Shift with the left) to move along the bench and up and down it. The view follows the box being filled automatically.

A piece that has just gone into a box blinks yellow three times. This is the same signal the warehouse map uses over a bin, and it has the same meaning: this item, in this position.

Goods that will not fit are drawn standing in their box and protruding from it, because the split assigned them to that box and the arrangement can only add that they do not fit. Goods that somebody set aside are listed separately, in words, under the picture.

Next steps

• Packaging materials — the carton catalogue the bench picks from
• Cartonization — how a box is chosen
• Packaging rules — limits, and when a carrier is asked
• Parcels — every box that will leave the building