Freight - Blind Shipping

Freight - Blind Shipping

Overview

Blind Ship allows you to specify a virtual ‘From’ address on your delivery labels.
This means that the dispatch ‘Origin’ details are ‘masked’ so that the delivery appears to have come from a different location.

Brokers who wish to give the impression that they were part of the supply chain for products will be able to select from
addresses flagged as a ‘Blind Ship’ address on their customer's details.

When an order is being fulfilled for the brokers’ client, printIQ will generate dispatch labels that appear to indicate that the product was shipped from
the ‘Blind Ship’ nominated address on the dispatch details rather than from your Factory’s Location.

Blind ship can be configured to be applied automatically for all orders for a particular customer.
This can be set up to be visible or invisible to the end user based on qualifying user roles.

The main takeaway to remember is that this is a display mask for the Source/Origin/From address for this dispatch, but all the while the freight is still
being priced and picked up from the actual factory location it is being shipped from.

Points to note

  1. Actual pickup location is real (Factory Location).
  2. ‘From’ address on the dispatch labels is masked with a customer specified address.
  3. Freight calculation is real based on the calculated freight price from the factory to the delivery destination.
  4. Only works for FedEx, UPS and carriers configured in Easypost that support it

How to enable blind shipping

The setting Always Blind Ship is a Customer-based setting and should be left disabled under system settings and enabled on a per-customers basis
for customers that would want the option to mask the origin address.

Always Blind Ship - ensures that the switch in the dispatch tab starts enabled with a Blind Ship address selected.




Role Based Blind Shipping - is a multi-role selector to control what user roles have access to this feature.
Commonly something like Internal for ‘Internal’ staff users and ‘Customer’ to allow customer users access to blind shipping.


Points to Note

  • If the user does not have an included role, they will simply not see anything regarding blind shipping in the dispatch tab details and will not be able to view the blind ship details.
    This does not prevent Blind Ship from being applied to the deliveries for this customer.
  • To access the Blind Ship feature on a quote, the customer must have at least one address flagged as a ‘Blind Ship’ address.
    Quotes for customers with no ‘Blind Ship’ address set will not see the option to blind ship. 
  • The customer setting ‘Always Blind Ship’ sets whether ‘Blind Ship’ is on or off on the quote by default.
    When enabled and there is at least one Blind Ship address defined, it will be switched ‘on’ in the quote with the default / first blind address pre-selected.
  • If ‘Always Blind Ship’ is enabled for a customer with an address marked as a ‘Blind Ship’ address but the user does not have one of the roles on the setting,
    Blind Ship will be enabled on the deliveries with the default / first blind address selected. This occurs invisibly to the user.
  • ‘Blind Ship’ functionality is enabled by the presence of an address marked as a ‘Blind Ship’ address.
    If ‘Always Blind Ship’ is enabled for a customer that has no addresses marked as a ‘Blind Ship’ type addresses,
    the user will not see anything regarding blind shipping in the dispatch tab details and will not be able to access blind shipping for quotes or jobs for this customer.
  • The ‘Blind Ship’ switch on the dispatch details will not show when the customer does not have at least one address flagged as a ‘Blind Ship’ address in the customer details.
  • While any address type (Delivery or Billing) can be set as a ‘Blind Ship’ address, it is recommended that the Billing address is not used.
  • ‘Blind Ship’ cannot be set on addresses added through the dispatch modal. Addresses must be flagged as ‘Blind Ship’ from within the Customers Details screen. (Customer admin function)

How it works

Access to ‘Blind Ship’ on the quote is dependent on at least one blind ship address being set on the customer details.
Without that, the ‘Blind Ship’ option switch will not appear in the dispatch details on quotes for that customer.

When an address is flagged as a ‘Blind Ship’ address, the ‘Company’ field in the address definition becomes mandatory and is
required to be filled out in the address details to save it down:



It is strongly advised that blind ship addresses be configured on ‘Delivery’ type addresses only - not set against the Billing address.

For users that cannot access ‘Blind Ship’ details, the addresses marked as ‘Blind Ship’ addresses will not appear for selection in address selectors.
Users with a qualifying role will see addresses marked as blind ship in address selectors.

Addresses can only be flagged as ‘Blind Ship’ addresses from within the ‘Customer Details’ screen.
When editing existing or adding new addresses from within ‘Quote Details’, there is no provision to set the new addresses as a ‘Blind Ship’ address. 

The address list in ‘Customer Details’ depicts which deliveries are set as ‘Blind Ship’ addresses.
A ‘Default’ blind ship address can be set on the customer details screen which will be pre-selected in quotes.
If there are multiple blind ship addresses defined, none of which are set as the default, the first in the list will be automatically selected on the dispatch details.

The ‘Default Blind Ship Address’ selector on the quote will only return addresses flagged as blind ship addresses:


In most cases there will be only one blind ship address defined.

Using Blind Shipping

Quotes

In the dispatch details of a quote:
      when the Customer has the setting ‘Always Blind Ship’ enabled
      AND Blind Ship addresses are configured
      AND the user has a qualifying role
the ‘Blind Ship’ switch will be enabled automatically, and the ‘Blind Ship Address’ selector will be shown with the default or first blind ship address loaded:


The selector drop-down returns all blind ship addresses.

Once the blind ship address is selected, the rest of the delivery process remains the same. 
Blind shipping does not affect the delivery price.

When Blind Ship is enabled, the default blind ship address is selected.
If the user changes the address to ‘Select…’ (effectively un-selecting the blind address) Blind Ship will be disabled when the quote is next loaded. 



When the customer has the setting ‘Always Blind Ship’ enabled
      AND Blind Ship addresses are configured
      BUT the user does NOT have a qualifying role
the ‘Blind Ship’ switch will be enabled automatically, and the default / first blind ship address will be selected.
However, the user will not be able to see any of this in the dispatch details:



When the freight is added, an icon depicting a ‘Blind Ship’ is shown when in Multiple freight mode.
With Single freight mode there is no indication.

All deliveries added by a user linked to a customer with the setting on to ‘Always Blind Ship’, and with no qualifying
Blind Ship roles will automatically be set to blind ship from the ‘Default’ blind ship address.

Addresses flagged as ‘Blind Ship’ addresses will not appear in the delivery address selector for users without a qualifying role.

‘Blind Ship’ deliveries can be mixed with standard deliveries coming from your Factory Location (assuming user access to Blind Ship) using the Multiple delivery tab.
Simply change the blind ship switch to add or remove the blind shipping details from the current delivery. Blind Ship can also be configured for Proofs and Samples


A tooltip showing the blind ship address appears when the blind ship icon is hovered over:


When ‘accepting’ a quote for a customer with MORE than one blind ship address defined, users with a ‘Blind Ship’ qualifying role will be presented with a blind ship address confirmation modal.
Each delivery with a blind ship address is shown:


Click ‘Close’ to go back and change the selected Blind Ship address on the quote.
Click ‘Confirm’ to accept the Blind Ship address and checkout.

Users without a qualifying user role to allow access to ‘Blind Ship’ will not be prompted to confirm the blind ship address at checkout.

Jobs

In the ‘Dispatch’ tab in ‘Job Details’, blind ship dispatch entries are identifiable by the blind ship icon displayed to the right of the delivery address.


To generate the ‘Blind Ship’ labels, click Create Consignment:


When the consignment is created, print the delivery labels from the print drop-down:




The label below is generated by UPS for the above delivery.
Note the blind ship address in the top left corner:


The label below is for the proof delivery, generated by FedEx:


Sales Orders

Dispatch details are at the bottom of sales orders.
If the delivery is to be blind shipped, the ‘Blind Ship’ icon is present on the right:


Click ‘Create Consignment’ to generate the dispatch labels:


Once the consignment has been created the carton labels can be produced from the print drop-down selector:


An example USPS blind ship label for the above order with the blind ship address showing:


Dispatch Board

The dispatch board displays a ‘Blind Ship’ icon on deliveries that are blind shipped with a tool-tip hover displaying the blind ship address details:


Clicking on the green ‘Title Bar’ above the icons will sort the board in order of the Name of the Blind Ship addresses:




Campaigns Board

The Campaigns board will also flag when a blind ship address is used


This can be changed by clicking on the icon to open the address modal: 


Blind Ship with CSV Uploads

Blind Ship addresses are available in csv uploads for Custom and Simplified Quotes (which also work through the directory monitor) as well as Sales Order uploads.

Simplified csv Upload



Custom csv Upload



Sales Orders csv Upload

The Customer setting ‘Always Blind Ship’ controls whether the blind ship details are exported onto the Sales Order CSV template (downloaded from the Customers board):


 When the setting is enabled for the selected customer, the default (or first, if default is not set) Blind Ship address’s details are included in the Sales Order template:


If ‘Blind Ship’ is not required for the orders, these cells can be cleared, and the upload will process as normal. 
If the blind ship details are present in the CSV, all fields (Co Name, Address, City, Post Code and Country) will be validated against the details of the blind ship address on the customer.
If there is a mismatch, the upload will not proceed, and an error will be displayed:



These fields have been added to end of the CSV and are not mandatory.

If ‘Blind Ship’ is to be used in the CSV uploads, the blind ship address details must appear on both the Product Lines and the Delivery lines.

Blind shipping and API Calls

Blind Ship addresses can be supplied to our main API calls:
• CreateQuoteWithDelivery
• GetPrice
• GetPriceWithProduct

Blind shipping and Webhooks

Available through web hooks (any webhook that deals with freight deliveries)

Blind shipping and markup templates

Available on markup templates (for example on the delivery labels generated through printIQ) so that we can swap out the factory address.

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