When you record a shipment, Rhythm knows the goods have left your warehouse. Rhythm reduces the quantity left to ship on the order, draws stock from your warehouse, records the cost of goods, and notifies your customer that the order is on the way. Use this article to record all or part of an order as shipped, whether it goes through UPS, another carrier, or in-person pickup.
When to Use This
Use this when all or part of an order is ready to ship by carrier or be handed to the customer in person. If you need to use UPS, read these basics first, then see Ship Through UPS. To ship several orders in one pass, see Ship Multiple Orders at Once.
Prerequisites
- Permission to create shipments.
- A ship-to address for the parcel. Rhythm fills in the order’s address, but you can change it.
- An available shipping method on the order. When an ordered item has shipping enabled, you need a shipping method to complete the order, so you cannot process the order first and handle shipping manually afterward.
Start the Shipment
- Open the order that needs shipping, then select Ship Order from the order record or from its row in your shipping queue. See View the Shipping Queue and Look Up Shipments.
- Review the order and customer at the top of the Create Shipment dialog.
Tip
An order awaiting pickup shows Deliver instead of Ship Order in the shipping queue. It opens the same dialog because you record a pickup the same way you record any other shipment. This applies only to an order already set up for in-store pickup; you cannot switch an order with shipping enabled to a picked-up state instead of shipping it.
Result
The dialog opens with every line still owed to the customer, and each line has an editable Qty to Ship.
Record the Shipment
- For each line, set Qty to Ship. It starts with the full quantity still owed on that line, so lower it or set it to
0if you want to leave part of the line for a later shipment. - Choose Ship using UPS integration or Ship manually. Rhythm starts on UPS when the order uses a UPS shipping method; otherwise, it starts on manual. See Ship Through UPS for the UPS-specific fields.
- If you are shipping manually, enter a shipping description. This is required even if you do not plan to show it. You can also enter a tracking number and weight.
- Confirm or change the Ship To: address.
- Enter the parcel’s dimensions.
- Optionally set a Shipment Date:. Leave it blank to use the current date and time.
- Add packing-slip notes for the customer or internal notes for staff if you need them. Rhythm does not generate a packing slip, so use these notes for text you want the customer to see with the shipment.
- If the customer has an email address on file, leave the confirmation checkbox ticked to send the standard shipment email. Untick it to skip that email for this shipment. See Shipment Confirmation Emails for what that email contains.
- Select Create Shipment.
Result
Rhythm records the shipment, reduces the order’s remaining quantity by what you shipped, and marks the shipped lines as shipped or partially shipped. When every line has shipped, Rhythm also marks the order as shipped. For products that track inventory, Rhythm draws stock from your warehouses. If you shipped through UPS, Rhythm buys the label during this step. If the purchase succeeds, you can print the label now or later, even when you shipped only some of the order’s lines. See Print and Reprint Shipping Labels.
Tip
You can ship a partly shipped order again as many times as needed, until nothing remains to ship.
Tip
You can ship an order before it is fully paid. An unpaid order still shows a Ship Order button in the Awaiting Payment view of your shipping queue.
Why Rhythm Might Refuse a Shipment
- Something required is missing. Rhythm needs the order, a line, the ship-to address, the shipping description, and the confirmation-email choice. If any of these are missing, Rhythm refuses the shipment before recording anything.
- A line isn't on the order, or isn't shippable. You can ship only lines that are on the order and marked shippable.
- You're trying to ship more of a line than remains. Rhythm refuses the shipment and tells you exactly how much is left.
- There isn't enough stock on hand. For a product that tracks inventory, Rhythm checks that your warehouses have enough stock before drawing it for the shipment. If they do not, Rhythm tells you how many more units are needed. Receive more stock, or lower the quantity, and try again.
- The fulfilled units have no inventory receipt behind them. Shipping calculates cost of goods sold from how the stock was received. A shipment can fail even when stock on hand looks sufficient if the units being shipped are missing the receipt history Rhythm needs to work out their cost. If the error mentions cost of goods, a fulfillment transaction, or a missing receipt, check the product's inventory receipts and how that stock entered Rhythm, not only its current quantity on hand.
Warning
You can normally ship a partly shipped order again for its remaining quantity. If an order stays in Awaiting Shipping after a partial shipment, and the Create Shipment dialog opens without its quantity fields or Create Shipment does not respond, contact Support with the order number so the remaining quantity can be shipped.
Related Reading
For UPS-specific choices, service and packaging, and UPS’s own requirements and limits, see Ship Through UPS. To ship a batch of orders in one pass instead of one at a time, see Ship Multiple Orders at Once. To print a label after the shipment is recorded, see Print and Reprint Shipping Labels. To see what still needs shipping, or find a shipment you have already recorded, see View the Shipping Queue and Look Up Shipments.