The Workflow board shows every dispatch due in a date range, grouped by dispatch date. It is where your warehouse or production team works through the day's shipments. This article covers the board and its filters, the workflow statuses, and the three steps of allocating, picking and shipping a dispatch.
The board
Click Workflow in the navigation bar.
Groups on the board
Overdue (red) – dispatches dated before today that are not shipped and not on hold. They stay here until you ship them or change their date.
On Hold (purple) – dispatches on the On Hold status dated on or before the end of your date range. Hidden while the Status filter is set to a single status.
One group per day in the date range.
The Overdue and On Hold groups sit at the top, collapsed, and show only when they have dispatches. Each header shows the group's total value and dispatch count; click it to collapse or expand the group. The summary bar at the bottom and the heading cover the day groups only.
Dispatches on draft, cancelled and complete orders are not on the board, except a dispatch you shipped today, which keeps its card for the first day of the range. The board refreshes itself every 30 seconds while the tab is visible.
A dispatch card
Each card shows the dispatch number, the customer, Ref No (the customer's order number, or N/A), Total in the order's currency, the status dropdown and the star, which cycles through six colours (see Dispatches). Cards in the Overdue and On Hold groups also show a Date row.
The picking icon shows next to the star until picking is complete, and becomes a warning icon when there is not enough stock. Click the dispatch number or the picking icon to open the sales order, where picking is done. When your organisation has operators, the traffic light and operator circles sit along the bottom of the card, and the Operator and Traffic Light filters appear. See Operators and traffic lights.
Filters
Filter | What it does |
Status | One workflow status, or All. On Hold is not listed; use the On Hold group. Shipped shows only dispatches shipped on the first day of the range. |
Date Range | Next 7 Days by default, or a preset up to Next Month. Edit either date for your own range. The start cannot be before today. |
Operator, Traffic Light | Shown only when your organisation has operators. Operator defaults to you if you are one; No Operator finds unassigned dispatches. |
Hide Empty Days | Removes days with no dispatches. |
Customer, Stock # (Advanced) | Dispatches for one customer, or that contain one stock item. |
Starred (Advanced) | All, or one star colour. |
BOM (Advanced) | Tick to hide fully picked dispatches, leaving only those with picking still to do. |
Click Advanced to show the last four filters. Reset Filters puts every filter back to its default.
Exporting to Excel
Click Excel in the heading. The file has two sheets:
Daily Totals – the date, total value in your base currency and dispatch count for each day shown on the board (with Hide Empty Days ticked, days with no dispatches are left out). Overdue and on-hold dispatches are not included.
Dispatches – every dispatch on the board with its number, date, customer, Ref No, total, currency, status, picking status, star colour and whether it is overdue.
Workflow statuses
Order Review, Shipped and On Hold are built in. Every status you add in Settings → App → Workflow Statuses is an allocated status and sits between Order Review and Shipped. The type of each status decides what happens to stock. The type is not shown on screen:
Type | Status | What it means |
Unallocated | Order Review | The dispatch is waiting. No stock is reserved. |
Allocated | Picking, Processed and any status you add | Stock is reserved for this dispatch. Picking is possible. |
Final | Shipped | The dispatch has left. The invoice is created. |
On hold | On Hold | The dispatch and its order show as On Hold; stock does not change. |
The built-in statuses cannot be renamed or removed and do not appear in the settings list.
Managing your statuses
Only an admin can add, rename or archive a status, in the Workflow Statuses form under Settings → App:
Type a name in New Workflow Status and click the tick. If the name already exists, the field clears and nothing is added.
Click the pencil next to a status to rename it.
Drag a status to change its order in the dropdown.
Click the pencil, then the archive icon, to archive a status. The last active status cannot be archived.
Tick Show Archived to see archived statuses and restore one.
A dispatch already on a status you archive keeps that status until you move it. The archived status is no longer offered in the dropdown, so nothing can be moved to it until you restore it.
Step 1: allocate
On the order page or on the board, change the dispatch status from Order Review to an allocated status such as Picking. Omono reserves the stock: each item's Allocated figure goes up. In Stock does not change yet.
For an assembly, Omono reserves built assemblies from the shelf first, then the components needed to build the rest. An assembly with a customised BOM is never taken from the shelf; Omono reserves its components only. Never-diminishing items are never reserved. See Assemblies and bills of materials.
Moving a dispatch back to Order Review unpicks and unallocates everything. Omono warns you first and asks Are you sure? Click Yes to continue or No to keep the current status.
Step 2: pick
Open the sales order and click the picking icon on the dispatch to open the Dispatch BOM / Picking form.
Until the dispatch is allocated, the form is read-only and tells you to move the dispatch off Order Review first. On a draft order, email, download or print the order first.
Reading the picking table
Column | Meaning |
Item | The line letter. Click it on an assembly to show or hide the components. |
Part #, Name | Click the name to open the stock item. |
Qty | The box for the quantity picked, with "of N" beside it. N is the dispatch quantity, or for a component the quantity needed to build the assemblies you have not taken from the shelf on the assembly row (every one of them for a customised assembly). |
Available | In Stock for a normal item or a component. For an assembly, the built assemblies you can still take: In Stock less what is reserved for other orders. - for a never-diminishing item and N/A for a customised assembly. |
Location, Warehouse | From the stock item. |
A row is highlighted when there is not enough stock to complete it.
Rules while picking
Enter the quantity picked for each line, or click Add All to pick as much as stock allows, built assemblies from the shelf first. Assembly rows take whole numbers only.
Omono applies each change to stock a moment after you stop typing. The item's In Stock and Allocated both go down by the picked quantity.
If you type more than is available, or more than the dispatch needs, the box shows as invalid and nothing is applied.
For an assembly, enter the quantity taken from the shelf on the assembly row and the quantities used on each component row. Once any component has been picked, the assembly row is locked.
Never-diminishing items have no box. They are never picked.
Click the tick to save the picked quantities as physically picked.
If you close the form with the cross, the quantities you picked since opening it go back to stock. Pressing Esc keeps your picks. Changes made by another user at the same time are kept.
A shipped dispatch opens read-only.
The picking list PDF
Click the print icon in the Dispatch BOM / Picking form to download PKL-1234-1.pdf. The icon shows only while the dispatch is allocated and not yet shipped. The PDF is headed with the dispatch number and date, the Company Name, Account #, Reference # and Sales Order Date #. The table has Part #, Name, Available, Warehouse, Location, Quantity and a Tick box for each item:
Assemblies and their components each have their own row. An item on several lines is merged into one row, sorted by part number. Never-diminishing items are left out.
Quantity is what still has to be picked from the shelf: the quantity entered in the picking form less anything already saved as physically picked. Available is the quantity on the shelf before this pick.
The picking list has your standard document header and no footer. See What prints on your PDF documents.
Dispatches with only never-diminishing items
A dispatch made up only of never-diminishing lines counts as fully picked. You can choose Shipped straight from Order Review and the invoice is created as normal.
Step 3: ship
You can only ship a dispatch once it is fully picked. Shipped is greyed out in the dropdown until then.
The shipping form
Choose Shipped. The Good Job! form opens. Enter or check the Courier and Tracking # (already filled in if entered early), then answer Mark SO-1234-1 for [customer] as Shipped? with Yes or No.
Before it asks, Omono runs three checks in this order.
Message | Reason | What to do |
Tasks Blocking Shipping | An open task on the order is marked Blocks Shipping. A task you cannot see shows as Private Task. | Complete the task, or untick Blocks Shipping on it. For a Private Task, only its owner or an assigned user can do that; ask the person in the Owner column. See Tasks. |
On Stop | The customer is on stop. | Take the customer off stop. |
Proforma Awaiting Payment | The customer is a proforma customer and the dispatch is not marked as paid. | Set the dispatch to Proforma Payment Received. See Invoices and proforma invoices. |
The Xero credit limit check
If Perform Pre-Shipping Credit Limit Check is switched on in the Xero settings under Settings → Connect, the form then asks Xero whether the customer's outstanding balance plus this invoice would go over the Credit Limit on the company. Depending on the setting, shipping is then blocked, allowed after a warning, or allowed for admin users only. If Omono cannot reach Xero or the customer is not yet a Xero contact, the form warns you and you can still ship. The check is skipped for proforma customers and customers on stop. See Connecting Omono to Xero.
What shipping does
creates the invoice with the next invoice number, today's date and a due date from the customer's terms;
sets the dispatch date to the day you shipped, so the dispatch moves into today's group on the board;
releases any stock allocated but not picked;
emails the invoice automatically, if Automatically Send Invoice Emails Upon Shipping is switched on in Settings → Templates → Sales Invoice Email;
moves the order to Complete if every line is now fully shipped;
sends the invoice to Xero on the next sync, if connected;
adds a system note and an Activity Feed entry recording who shipped the dispatch and when.
Shipped dispatches on the board
The board keeps shipped dispatches only for the first day of the date range, so you see today's shipments and nothing older. They show as green cards at the end of the day's list, with the status dropdown greyed out and no picking icon, and only when the Status filter is All or Shipped.
To find older shipped dispatches, use the Invoice # filter on the Sales Orders screen and tick Complete in its Status filter, because the default filter leaves complete orders out. See Sales orders.
Can I un-ship a dispatch?
No. Once a dispatch is Shipped it cannot be moved, and the order cannot be cancelled. This protects the invoice number and the invoice already sent to Xero. You can still change the courier, tracking number, serial numbers and paperwork notes; the dispatch date and quantities are locked.
If a dispatch was shipped by mistake:
Raise a credit note for the invoice value and enter the invoice number in Reference #. See Credit notes.
If the goods never left the building, put them back into stock with a Stocktake on each item. See Stock levels, stocktakes and reordering.
If the customer still wants the goods, raise a new sales order. Click Copy on the original order to reuse its lines.
On hold
Move a dispatch to On Hold to pause it. The whole order shows as On Hold and the dispatch moves to the On Hold group on the board, with an Activity Feed entry. On Hold does not touch stock: anything already allocated or picked stays that way, and the warehouse can carry on picking, which still takes stock. To stop picking and free the stock for other orders, move the dispatch to Order Review instead.
Taking a dispatch off hold to an allocated status such as Picking keeps the existing allocation, or reserves stock now if it had never been allocated. Taking it to Order Review unpicks and unallocates it, after the usual confirmation. The order returns to On Order (or On Order - Call Off) once no dispatch on it is on hold.