As a logistics manager, ensuring timely deliveries is your top priority. Imagine this: one of your truck drivers calls because the customer is not available, leaving the delivery incomplete. While rare, such scenarios waste valuable time and money that could be better spent elsewhere.
To prevent this, you decide to email customers a day before their delivery. But let’s face it—manually searching for email addresses, crafting messages, and sending them is tedious and inefficient.
There is a smarter solution. Let’s explore how automation can simplify this process and save you time!
To send out Dispatch Information via email easily, some setup is necessary. For this, go to Dispatch Info Setup. Activate the feature by turning the Activate field on in the General FastTab.
The toggle for Send Dispatch w/ Route Posting determines whether the Dispatch Information gets sent automatically whenever a Route is posted. If changes happen regularly once you have informed the customer, we suggest turning this toggle off.
In the Mailing FastTab you fill out from which email address Dispatch Information gets sent in the field Dispatch Info Sender E-Mail. In the Dispatch Info Mail Subject field, you specify the default subject of the email, for which you can use field-specific placeholders, like %1 for Shipment Date, see below. You can also create translations of the subject, by clicking on Translations in the top menu.
While you only use email to inform customers, set Default Value Send Dispatch Information to Per E-Mail in the Default Setup FastTab.
Choose per unloading point for the field Default Value Dispatch Information Type, so customers receive Dispatch Information once per Route, instead of per Sales Order.
To adjust the design and content of the Dispatch Information, there are several options.
Once this is set up, the sales department has to set up who should receive the information. This can be done as follows.
Go to Customers and open a Customer Card by clicking on the underlined number.
In the Home menu on the Customer Card, click on Dispatch Information to open the Customer Dispatch Information window.
Select the Customer in the Customer No. column.
If you want to set up different receivers per location, you can choose one in the Ship-to Code column.
Select the Contact to which the Dispatch Information should be sent in the Contact No. column. As you do so, the Contact Name and Dispatch Information E-Mail column are filled automatically.
The Send Dispatch Information and Dispatch Information Type column are set to the default values we chose in step 4 and 5.
Repeat steps 8 until 13 for every customer, to finalize the setup.
Now, if Dispatch Information is sent out automatically, every time you post a Route Allocation, your customers get informed. If you have turned the toggle mentioned in step 2 off, however, you can do this manually before completing the posting process. There are multiple ways to do this.
To do this for an individual Route Allocation, go to Route Allocation List and open a Route Allocation.
In the top menu, under Print/Send, click on the option Send dispatches and press Yes to manually send the Dispatch Information to all customers of which a Sales Order or Sales Return is in the Route Allocation.
Alternatively, to do this for all Route Allocations with the same Shipment Date, go to Send dispatches.
In the window that opens, select the Shipment Date Route Allocation and press OK to send the Dispatch Information to all customers with a Sales Order or Sales Return planned in Route Allocations for that Shipment Date.
While it takes some time to initially set this up, once you have done this, informing your customers about deliveries has never been easier!
