How to Decrease Shipping Costs with Pre-Manifesting

How many staff members does it take to send one package on your warehouse? Does each order undergo precisely the exact same procedure?

Is it true that your shipping combination tends to comprise lots of packages of identical weight and measurements?

If that’s the case, you might have the ability to simplify your shipping process with pre-manifesting to streamline the procedure, ship quicker, and free up employees to concentrate on work on your own operations.

Rethinking the Order-to-Shipping Workflow

The following is a generalized fulfillment workflow commonly followed by many companies:

• First, a picker gets items from your warehouse.
• Next, the item is packed at a packing station and then sent to the shipping station.
• At the shipping station, the package is weighed and a shipping label is printed and applied.

Within this situation, all packs are managed in precisely the exact same manner, with exactly the exact same quantity of”rolls” to select, pack and send the order, even though a lot of them are equal in every way but for the customer speech. There are a more efficient means to deal with those”conventional” packages — pre-manifesting.
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What is Pre-Manifesting?

Pre-manifesting is a procedure where the tag at the start of the shipping procedure, instead of waiting before the package arrives in the delivery channel. That bundle can then bypass the weighing phase of this delivery procedure, reducing the amount of touch points required from your packers and shippers. Rather, the packer adds the tag into the package and it might skip the delivery channel, leading to less labour and faster gratification.

Or

Pre-Manifest Picking is the process of preparing a shipment before you pick the items or products. In most cases, this means printing documents like packaging lists, shipping labels, and invoices. Alternatively, Post-Manifest picking is when you print these documents after you pick the order. Post-Manifest Picking is more common, but each method has its merits and downsides.

When Can You Use Pre-Manifesting?

Pre-manifesting works very well on orders in which you already know the weight and destination of the package at the beginning of the shipping process. For example, your company is a dinner vendor.

• You get an order for 40 dinner plates.
• Your fulfillment system stores the exact item weight for each product, and can transfer the remaining details of this data to your shipping system.
• The shipping system must be able to calculate the total package weight and print the shipping label before assembling the package.
• The label printing process takes place upwards, and the shipping labels are printed and applied by the packer.
• This process eliminates the need for an order to go to the shipping station for weighing and labeling.
• Many touches are eliminated by the process for faster, more efficient fulfillment.

Here is another example that unites pre-manifesting with batch transport. A business that has an online shop and supplies marketing of a pearl necklace over a weekend — receives 2,000 orders — all exact same thing, routing and weight. Does that make sense?

Pre-Manifesting Requirements

The trick to successful pre-manifesting is located in the ideal blend of workflow and technology. At minimum, it takes:

• Order management of inventory system which is capable of capturing product items, loads etc.
• Configured to pass product details with orders, integration to shipping systems.
• Shipping software that is configured to perform calculations, routing, and create shipping labels and has the ability to transfer it back to the printed upstream.

Be cautious of working with vendors that just sell specific kinds of shipping systems, as individuals who don’t encourage pre-manifesting will always advocate their own systems rather. That is the reason you have to get in contact with a partner who provides a flexible system which could satisfy all of your shipping requirements.
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Could Pre-Manifesting Work for Your Business?

If you know that the weight, pre-disclosure of most items you ship can result in huge cost savings in your shipping process. By advancing label creation at the beginning of the order fulfillment workflow, you can reduce steps for employees at the shipping station, as they must weigh and label less of the packages coming down the line.