Sir Bill of Lading – The Crown Prince of Shipping Documents
There are many shipping documents one might encounter daily, such as the ASN, Packing list, Commercial invoices, and of course, our friend the Bill of Lading. By the way, what is with the pronunciation of LADING? Based on empirical research, LADING should rhyme with a word like GLAD, but nooooo! Instead, this foolish word rhymes with MADE. No joke, this is a serious point of confusion in warehouses across the globe. We are glad to have cleared this up and that you have made it to this blog!
What is the bill of lading (BOL)? The BOL is the piece of paper that escorts the shipped items and serves as the legal document between the shipper and the carrier. It will list the “Ship from” the “Ship to” addresses, Third part billing information if applicable, Carrier, and details about the shipment. It is usually signed in dragons’ blood and the execution is witnessed by Greek gods. That last part is not true, but fun.
Generating a Bill of Lading in Dynamics 365
There are a couple of ways to generate a BOL in Dynamics 365. The first is to manually build the BOL in the BOL form, Modules>Sales and marketing>Sales orders>Order shipping>Bill of lading. Click New and add a shipment.
On the General fast tab, there is the ability to set the reference and the designation of Master BOL. A master BOL can be used if there is more than one shipment in the load. The Master BOL will have the same layout when printed but it will refer to the summary of all the containers in the load.
Click on the Freight fast tab to add the carrier and on the Addresses fast tab to add addresses.
The second way to generate the bill of lading is from the Load planning workbench. If this route is used the load status must be Shipped. If there’s more than one shipment in the load, a bill of lading is created for each shipment. After a bill of lading has been created you can make changes to it on the Bill of lading page.
When then BOL is created, click on the Bill of lading orders and Bill of lading items, respectively, to add the additional load/shipment information.
Once the BOL has been created and is ready it can be printed. An example from D365 is shown below. The layout can be customized if needed but will require knowledge of development extensibility.
There is a parameter in Transportation Management that will allow the master BOL to be created if more than one shipment exists on a load. Navigate to Modules>Transportation management>Setup>Transportation management parameters.
We hope that this has helped understand the BOL and how to access and use it within D365. If you are interested in other shipping topics check out these blog posts:
Dynamics 365 – Want to do the Wave?
Dynamics 365 Wave Label Printing – Learn To Ride The Label Wave