This activity is used to print a Bill of Lading, as soon as the shipment is created. However, you should note that at this point the document will be considered as preliminary if printed before the shipment has been completed. The bill of lading can be printed several times, and also at any time during the shipment process until the shipment reaches the Closed status.
This activity can be executed either manually per shipment, manually for all shipments connected to a consolidated shipment or automatically in the shipment flow. Whether or not to print a bill of lading automatically, is controlled by the shipment type of the shipment. In the shipment type, it can be defined that a bill of lading should be printed at the execution of a main activity in the shipment flow e.g. reservation, report picking, delivery. A consolidated shipment is defined as one departure of several shipments from the specified site, to all the delivery addresses of the connected shipments. When executed from the consolidated shipment the bill of lading for all connected shipments are printed in reversed load sequence order to get the bill of lading in unloading order.
To get a complete bill of lading, it is necessary to define a handling unit structure. A bill of lading printed after the shipment is completed is considered as final.
Note: If a bill of lading is printed and no handling unit structure has been defined, the document content is considered incomplete.