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Creating and Managing Order Shipment Pallets

Truck shipments require pallets. Goflow streamlines this process by enabling you to easily create and manage pallets, generate pallet labels, and relay pallet information to the channel.

Pallets are currently supported for Amazon Vendor and Walmart Vendor orders only.

Managing Pallets While Packing

You can create and modify pallets while packing products into shipment boxes. This feature is particularly useful if you have multiple pallets per shipment and need to adjust their configurations as you pack. It allows you to dynamically manage pallet contents and easily move boxes between pallets, ensuring a flexible and efficient packing process.

To enable interactive pallet management, follow these steps:

  1. From the left sidebar, go to Directory › Stores, and select a store.
  2. On the Settings card, click the pencil icon to edit.
  3. Check Create Pallets While Packing, and Save.

Creating Pallets

When you close the first box, a new open pallet is automatically created. As you continue to close more boxes, they are added to the open pallet. Once the pallet is full, close it by clicking on Close Pallet.

In the Close Pallet modal, you can update the weight and dimensions of the pallet. Goflow automatically calculates the weight of the pallet by summing up the weight of the shipment boxes and adding an additional 40 pounds for the weight of the skid itself. The weight and dimensions of the pallets will prepopulate when requesting shipment routing. If you later add or remove boxes from this pallet, the weight will automatically recalculate.

You can manually update the weight of a pallet. If you do so, the weight will no longer automatically recalculate if you add or remove boxes from the pallet later. To revert to automatic recalculation, click on Calculate from Boxes.

After closing the first pallet, a second open pallet is automatically created as you continue to close more boxes. When the order is fully packed, closing the last box will automatically close the last pallet as well.

Editing Pallets

To view the boxes on a pallet, select the pallet and click View Boxes. The Pallet Boxes modal displays a list of shipment boxes within that pallet. You can expand a shipment box to see its product contents, or click the plus sign at the top to expand all boxes. If you're looking for boxes with a specific product, use the product filter at the top to easily locate them.

To move boxes to another pallet, select the boxes and click Actions. From there, choose what to do with the selected boxes. You can move them to an existing closed pallet, return them to the open pallet, or create a new pallet with only the selected boxes. The options available will depend on whether the current pallet is open or closed, and whether there is already another closed pallet.

When moving all boxes from a closed pallet, you are effectively deleting that pallet.

When boxes are removed from a pallet, its weight is automatically adjusted. You can also manually manage the weight and dimensions by clicking on the pallet, editing the numbers, and saving your changes.

Deleting Pallets

To delete a closed pallet, and move all its boxes to the open pallet, follow these steps:

  1. Click into the pallet.
  2. Select View Boxes.
  3. In the Pallet Boxes modal, click on Unpack Pallet.

The deleted pallet number will be reused for the next closed pallet. For example, if you have two pallets and delete pallet 1, the next closed pallet will be labeled pallet 1. If no further pallets are closed, you may end up with pallet number in nonsequential order. For instance, if you have two pallets and move all boxes from the first pallet to the second, you will be left with pallet 2 but no pallet 1.

To delete all closed pallets and start over, click on Unpack All in the main pallet card. This action will move all boxes to the open pallet.

Whenever a pallet is deleted, the SSCC number printed on the pallet label becomes invalid. After destroying a pallet, the printed pallet labels must be discarded.

Printing Pallet Labels while Packing

When closing a pallet, you can choose to automatically print pallet labels. Adjust the number of copies printed by following these steps:

  1. From the left sidebar, go to Directory › Stores, and select a store.
  2. On the Documents card, click the pencil icon to edit.
  3. Under Pallet Label, set the number of copies to print for LTL.

To disable automatic printing of pallet labels, set the number of copies to 0.

Managing Pallets on a Packed Order

Inside a packed order, under the Shipping section, you can see the number of boxes and pallets the order contains. For orders that don't yet have pallets, click on the blue button Upload Pallets. To edit existing pallets, and for understanding file headers on the upload, refer to managing pallets in bulk.

When receiving routing instructions and the store instructs to ship with a small parcel carrier, the pallets will automatically be deleted.

Similarly, if you manually change the carrier type of a packed order to a small parcel carrier, any existing pallets will be destroyed.

Printing Pallet Labels on Packed Order

To print pallet labels for a packed order, click on the Documents icon in the upper left-hand corner inside the order page.

To download pallet labels for multiple orders in bulk, follow these steps:

  1. From the left sidebar, go to Orders › Orders.
  2. Go to Actions and click the three dots next to Download Order Documents.
  3. Check Pallet Labels.
  4. Choose whether to download each label as a separate document or combine all labels into one PDF document.
  5. Finally, click the Download button.

Managing Pallets in Bulk

Use a CSV file to import pallet information for packed orders. This upload allows you to import pallets for one or multiple orders simultaneously. You can create new pallets for orders that do not yet have any, as well as modify existing pallets for orders that already do.

To import pallets in bulk, follow these steps:

  1. From the left sidebar, go to Orders › Orders.
  2. At the top of the page, click on Import › Import Pallets.
  3. Review the Columns tab to understand the required and optional file headers.
  4. From the Upload tab, download a sample CSV file.
  5. Fill in the pallet information, save the file, and upload it.

During the file upload process, you can choose how to handle orders with existing pallets:

Understanding the File Headers

The Columns tab provides a brief explanation of the required and optional headers. This section offers an expanded discussion:

Order IDOrder NumberStorePalletBoxesPoundsOuncesLengthWidthHeight
1GJTL3JHAmazon Vendor11-50
1234251-100
12343101,102,103-11020001484072