One of the most common processes in your warehouse is likely the order fulfilment process. It is important for this process to be highly efficient. When developing this flow in Leanafy, we prioritized minimizing your workload and maximizing output. This guide will provide you with a step-by-step process for the entire outbound flow.
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Understanding the Outbound Operation Workflow:

Here is an overview of how to handle an order in Leanafy.
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Orders can be of three types:
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1. Normal: All orders that have allocated inventory are marked as normal .

2. Priority: Normal orders can be marked as priority if their fulfilment needs to be expedited.

3. Back-order: Orders are marked as back orders when we don't have enough items in the inventory to fulfil that order.
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Orders also go through multiple stages, at each of these stages a different functionality becomes available in the order.

1. Open: All new orders are marked as open by default. This is the start of the order's journey.

2. Picking: All orders need a picklist to initiate the picking process. Once this picklist is generated, the order is moved to the Picking stage.

3. Picked: Once all the items for the order's picklist have been picked the order will move to the picked stage. This is also the stage at which we decrease the warehouse inventory for picked items of the order.

4. Packed: Once all the items from the orders are packed and these packages have been added to Leanafy WMS then the order will be automatically marked as packed. There is also an override available to mark the order as packed without having to enter packaging info in Leanafy. The upside of the override is that it saves you time but the downside is that you won't be able to use automated rate shopping at the time of shipping without adding packages. So we recommend only using the override in case you are not going to use Leanafy's inbuilt shipping capability.

5. Shipped: Once the shipping labels for all the packages of your orders are generated, the system will start considering the packages as shipped. And if all the packages are shipped then the order will be marked as shipped automatically as well. Again we provide an override to mark the order as shipped without having to create any package or without providing us any shipping info. but we only recommend using this option in case you choose to ship your orders via a different platform or system.

6. Closed: This is the final stage of an order in the Leanafy system. You can mark the order as closed once you have dispatched the order from your warehouse. This will remove the order from your Order's page view, you can choose to view all closed orders by selecting the same status from the filters.

7. Cancelled: If you mark an order as cancelled, for whatever reason you might deem necessary then it will be removed from your order's page, you can still view these cancelled orders by explicitly setting the status in the filter to "Cancelled".

Now that you know all the basic information about orders in Leanafy It's time to go through the flow of creating an order and fulfilling it.

1. Creating an order in WMS

   The first step is to create an order in the system. Orders can be created in multiple ways. Like directly adding an order using our create order form or by uploading a CSV file containing all the orders. The second method is best suited if you have to push multiple orders at once.

2. Picking Items for an Order

   i) Generate Picklist: After adding all the items to an order, you can generate the picklist to initiate the picking process.
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   ii) Assign Pick list to a User: To further optimize your warehouse operations, you have the option to assign the generated picklist to a specific user or picker. This ensures that the right person is responsible for fulfilling the order.

   
   iii) Picking Items: Once you've generated the picklist, you're just a click away from initiating the picking process! Simply follow the listed items in the specified order, pick all the items in the mentioned quantity, and you'll be ready for the next step.

3. Packing Items for an Order

   After you have picked all the items for an order, it's time to pack them for shipping. You can select the standard package created for your warehouse, carrier packages, or provide custom dimensions for packaging the item. Once the item(s) are packed, they are ready for shipping.

4. Shipping a Packed Order

   Once the item(s) in the order are packed, you are ready to ship it. Select the package to ship, add customer details, Enter the pick-up details and at last, choose from the various carrier partners integrated with your warehouse to ship the order.

5. Close the Order

   Once all the packages are shipped in the order, the order is ready to be marked as closed.