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Need a way to specify Ship-To Contact Name, Ship-To Company, and Ship-To Address

started a topic over 9 years ago

As DEAR stands right now, a given customer may have multiple Ship-To Addresses, but it seems that this is assuming a scenario where the customer has multiple facilities to which items may shipped.

A different scenario, is customers who are purchasing something, such as a gift, which is to be shipped to someone else, meaning it is a different name, different company (if any), as well as a different address than the customer’s (company name, contact name, and billing address).

I am working with a client, FernCreek Confections, on this very issue. We have tried to create a workaround for this, but it is not acceptable. We have tried adding an additional contact name as a sort of “sub-customer” and separately an additional shipping address for the “sub-customer”, but then when we send it to ShipStation, the customer company name still appears on the shipping label. For example, let’s say BigFirm calls to order 10 chocolate bars for their client Jack Smith. In DEAR, the customer is company=BigFirm, Contact=John Doe, Billing Address=123 Main Street, Anytown, MA 02543. BigFirm would like to send the order Jack Smith, 444 Johnson Road, Newtown, PA 23044. The label is ShipStation appears as: 
Jack Smith 
BigFirm 
444 Johnson Road 
Newtown, PA 23044

The address is correct except for adding the BigFirm part.

Further, though, the DEAR interface does not effectively support shipping to Jack Smith. The DEAR user need to select Jack Smith as the contact and then separately need to select Jack Smith’s address for the Shipping Address. The user needs to somehow know what Jack Smith’s address to make this work. This is not an effective solution for this sort of sales processing.

In order to support this sort of “gift” ordering, there needs to be a way to specify, together (i.e, they are directly connected in database), the Ship-To Name, Ship-To Company, and Ship-To Address for customers.

Is there any way to support this with the current implementation of DEAR? 
How does DEAR support gift order that come over from Shopify?

FernCreek Confections needs this functionality. They have many gifts orders so they must have a way to do this. They have put a big investment into getting up on DEAR and now are stuck not being able to process orders through DEAR.

If implementing this as a new feature, consider adding additional Ship-To information such as phone number and email address.


14 people like this idea
  • Awesome! thank you!!

  • That's great news!!  Thanks for the update and posting the upcoming release to this thread!


    -Stan


    1 person likes this
  • Hi Mike,


    I noticed this was added to the new update but it won't let me select from existing customers in our database and have to type in all the details manually? 


    Is there a way to choose from customer already in our database? 

  • Nice one guys, the facelift is loading quicker too. 


  • Just giving this a test run and there were a few things that appear to need fixing/support with:


    1. What are the Merge tags for these new shipping company fields? We'd like to modify our packing slips 
    2. Can a shipping customer be selected from the database(used again) rather than being manually typed each time? (much like a billing company)
    3. The 3PL export file doesn't reference this new shipping company (it still outputs the billing company) so this needs updating.  
    4. The API integration with GoSweetSpot (or any third party shipping agent) still references the billing company, not the specified shipping company

    Other than that it's looking good, hopefully these are easy bugs to iron out so that it's a solid upgrade :)

  • Hi David,


    Thanks for testing it out, please see answers below:


    1. No new mail merge fields are required. When ship to feature is used the normal shipment fields are used with new customer details specified.

    2. No we do not add this contact to the data base as it is assumed that it is a one-time shipment. If its not a one time shipment you can just add it as another contact & shipment address to the customer.

    3. This will be resolved.

    4. Currently we are not sure if this can be achieved, a new field would need to be added but in that case we would not be able to replace customer name.



  • Hi Mike, 


    Thanks for the quick reply. I am still unable to output a shipping company to the packing slips/invoice. Do you mind taking a look at my example. Have also responded to your comments.


    1.  When I use the ship to feature it doesn't seem to pull in the Shipping Company. (e.g ABC Demo Company in my example) so I am unsure how to get this info to show in the packing slips & invoices. The delivery company is really important to make sure it gets to the right place

    2. I get what you're saying but rather than a "contact" an actually shipping company would be a much simpler and feature rich implementation. Can live with this one but it does seem like a half fix and a true shipping company would allow for a lot more flexibility. 

    3. Cheers, this is really important

    4. If you could get point 2 running as a true Shipping Company this should make this possible? Would make a lot of sense to get this fixed as a lot of people integrate with third party shipping services. 


    Thanks for addressing these, the improvements will make a lot of difference to our processes and im sure a lot of other users. 


    image




  • Hi David,


    Are you using simple sale or advanced sale?


    Thanks

  • Hey Mike, 


    We are using the simple sale.



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  • Hi David,


    Thanks for pointing this out, yesterday we introduced 2 new mailmerge fields:


    ShipToDifferentContact

    ShipToDifferentCompany


    They will only have data if the ship to different company option is ticked off.


    Cheers



  • Cheers Mike, 


    Really appreciate the swift responses on the forum and we've also been impressed with the support via facebook messenger.


    What is our best way to set up the invoice to take advantage of this? Will we need two invoice templates? (one for normal sale, one for "ship to different" customer sale)


    If possible could we use the ShipToDifferentContact + ShipToDifferentCompany fields and then if there is no data available then the normal shipping company/contact details are substituted? 


    We are jtrying to minimize the need to create multiple templates and streamline operations. 


    1 person likes this
  • I'm having the same problem as David, when printing the invoice the ship to name is the same.


    Also why can't I select a customer from my existing without typing it manually? I thought this is what you were implementing?

  • Just so you're aware we do quite a few finance invoices where it is billed to the finance company then shipped to the customer... So hence why we need to select from our existing customers.


    Have a look at MYOB, the most used accounting software in australia, you are able to ship to a customer card OR type it manually.

  • Hi David & Robert,


    When you include the mail merge  ShipToDifferentContact + ShipToDifferentCompany fields you can use the IF function in your template. So if the ship to different company is not used then original customer shipping info will be used.


    Please see attached template.


    Thanks



    docx
    (64.8 KB)
  • Cheers Mike, 


    Will get our .docx document person to give this a go. 

    Do you know if it's possible to utilize the IF function to hide the discount field if no discount is applied to a product? e.g IF discount = 0% hide that column (or even just the word "discount") I understand you could create another invoice document but this is open to human error. 


    Be great to hide this for people paying full retail or they will wonder why they didn't get a discount. 


    Thanks for all the improvements lately, really growing into DEAR

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