It's important to keep your inventory levels adequate especially during peak season to avoid products running out of stock. With the Locad Control Tower, you can coordinate incoming stock to be received and processed with our fulfillment centers.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
What is an ASN?
An ASN is an Advanced Shipping Notice which our fulfilment center (FC) uses to process an inbound shipment. It will be used as a basis for our FC to plan and prepare the warehouse to receive your items and ensure that they are inbounded according to your requirements.
How to create an ASN
The new process for raising an inbound request is as follows:
Log in to the Locad dashboard, click on the Inbound section on the left side, then click on Inbound Requests.
On the top right corner, click on the New Inbound Request button.
Select New Inbound ASN, fill out the fields as follows, and click Submit:
Consignment Number (your reference for the inbound shipment in the format of NI-BrandNameddmmyy (estimated delivery date); NI = New Inbound); guidelines on ASN naming here.
From Address (the address the inbound shipment originates from)
Warehouse (the fulfillment center that you are shipping your inventory to)
Planned Arrival Date (the proposed date for the shipment arriving at our fulfillment center)
This will generate a Draft ASN which allows you to edit your ASN before final submission to Locad for approval.
To update your inventory for the ASN, click on the Update Items button.
Click on the Download Sample Template and open the file.
Enter the SKU codes, quantity, and the on the template file and save to your desktop. For the format of the expiry date, kindly ensure that the cell format is set to a short date.
If there is an SKU to be inbounded with multiple expiry dates, please create separate rows for that SKU to indicate a separate quantity and expiry date for that batch.
Ex. There are 9 pieces of SKU JC-TEST-WFL-001 to be inbounded. 4 pieces will expire on November 28, 2027, and the remaining 5 will expire on October 11, 2027. This SKU should have 2 rows in the template indicating the corresponding quantity and expiry date. See the illustration below:
Please note that if expiry management is enabled for an SKU, you must enter an expiry date for the ASN to be uploaded. If the expiry date is not yet finalized, please provide a tentative expiry date. You can still modify the expiry date up to 24 hours before the Planned Arrival Date, even if the ASN has been submitted. If you input an expiry date for an SKU for which expiry management is not enabled, the ASN will not be uploaded. In this case, you must remove the expiry date from the ASN before uploading the file.
REMINDER: When a new SKU is created and it requires expiry management, please reach out to the help team so we can enable it before inbounding the item. We will no longer be able to activate expiry management if there are quantities inbounded in an SKU.
Drag the saved ASN Upload Template File to the Drag and drop section, then once the file appears, click on Upload. Your SKUs and quantities for this shipment will now be shown.
While your ASN is still in the ASN_DRAFT status, you can edit the SKUs and quantity. Simply click on Update items and upload a new ASN Upload Template with the correct SKUs and quantities. The changes will be reflected on the page after upload.
Please note that the last file to be successfully uploaded will be the ASN that will flow to our back end for approval, once you hit ‘Submit”.
If you wish to revise the quantity for only one or some of the SKUs from the initial upload, you will need to reupload the whole file, including the SKUs that will not be revised. If you are looking to remove one SKU from the inbound, you will need to reupload the ASN file without that SKU.
However, if you just need to update the expiry dates of the SKUs in the ASN and there will be no changes in the quantity or number of SKUs, you can just click on Update Expiry so you can upload a new file that details the new expiry dates. You can still update the expiry dates of an ASN even after it has been submitted as long as this is done 24 hours before the Planned Arrival Date.
The history section will show you the progress of your ASN. If an upload fails because of errors on the file (e.g. it includes an SKU that has not been uploaded to the Locad dashboard), this will be reflected on the errors file.
You can click on the ‘errors’ hyperlink as shown below, which will trigger the file to download.
The sample error file is shown below:
To add in the carrier details such as carrier name, tracking number, and any notes related to the shipment, click Edit on the details section.
Once filled in, click Save. You can also change the Shipping date while the status is in ASN_DRAFT.
To upload your Delivery Note, click Attach Document in the Document section.
Select Instruction from the Document type drop-down, drag your file to the upload section, and click Upload.
Once you are ready to submit your ASN to Locad for approval, click Submit.
You can then monitor the progress of your ASN on the Inbound Tracking page.
As a reminder, all ASNs uploaded by 11:00 AM Monday to Friday will be processed for approval with our fulfillment center teams the same day. You can view our inbound guidelines and reminders here.
How to add a Value Added Service (VAS)
Do you know that you can submit additional value added service (VAS), such as item labelling and stock unloading, in the ASN instead of submitting a support ticket separately? Submitting VAS via Locad Control Tower allows you to track the approval and completion on a single view in the ASN.
Before submitting the ASN, click Add Value Added Service.
Select the VAS activity that you need for the shipment.
Provide information of the specific VAS activity E.g. select the SKUs, indicate the quantity, provide remarks and additional attachments/instructions. Click Save.
Continue to add more VAS activity if necessary. Else, you are ready to submit the ASN.
If you have any questions, please contact our Customer Success team through the Support widget on your Locad dashboard.