Delivery Notes

Multiple Delivery Addresses : It would be useful to have multiple delivery addresses for one customer, we have some customers with 20 delivery addresses.

Hi All. There are several delivery note themes in the themes directory, which can be applied to any invoice. I do appreciate it's a bit of a pain to have to change the theme to delivery note and then back to the regular invoice theme.

Please have a delivery note on an easy click of a button and also have delivery addresses option on the invoice like other bookkeeping systems do. It is something most businesses need.

Every order I have needs a delivery note, I am doing them manually and it takes too long. It must be simple to implement!

delivery notes : I recently contacted the support team to inquire as to how I create delivery notes corresponding to invoices and they gave me instructions on how to create a delivery note template.

Having looked into this, I have been able to create a delivery note, however I want to be able to create an invoice and directly off the back of the invoice, print off a delivery note (it would be exactly the same a the invoice but without the costs £ on it it)

At present, I am having to create an invoice and then create an exact replica as a delivery note, as a seperate task.

Hope that makes sense.

The delivery note feature is now work in progress.

I agree - please can we have a Delivery Note that can simply be created from the Invoice with the click of a button, that also removes any payment details or amounts. This was a standard option in Quickbooks and worked very well.

I also agree - please can we have a Delivery Note that can simply be created from the Invoice with the click of a button, that also removes any payment details or amounts. This must be very simple to implement - it doesn't require any new information, just a form and a button. Please please??!

please can we have a Delivery Note that can simply be created from the Invoice with the click of a button, that also removes any payment details or amounts

Great news - thanks for listening! How long to develop and launch do you think?

While this is marked as high-priority, our developers are pretty much maxed-out due to the approaching tax year. So the earliest we can have a developer implementing this is week after next.

This provides us with 10 days to gather requirements and user needs and do the design (watch this space as I may post a few questions here or ask for feedback).

Hopefully nothing super-urgent will pop in the next 10 days, and if all goes by plan we may have this deployed on the last week of March. But we can't commit to this at the moment - but it's high-priority.

I don't think the design needs to be anything different from the invoice layout, just a change of the text 'Invoice' to 'Delivery Note' and the removal of prices and payment data.
Other handy additions would be a 'Quantity Dispatched' and 'Outstanding Balance' where quantity currently is for part ships and short ships. Also being able to remove all company data if shipping to a 3rd party on behalf of a customer. That being said the above points should be pretty quick and simple to change but I understand your time constraints. It has just been hard to love Clearbooks when I have had to change the delivery note in photoshop or word when I had 5 or more urgent orders late in the day.

Thanks for the feedback Nathan. Would be great if others chip in as well with requests.

Depending on complexity, we may not implement all features straight away, but would be good to know everything's needs.

Nathan has come up with a great suggestion regarding the option to remove your company data from a delivery note if shipping on behalf of a third party.

I operate a sameday courier service business and this would be great for me as I do some sub contract work for other courier firms. I sometimes have to provide my own unbranded delivery note which is signed by the recipient as proof of delivery (POD) and then returned to the courier firm who in turn pass it on to their customer, so they obviously don't want my business eetails on the note.

From my perspective it would be great if there was an option to add to the bottom of the note a section for the recipient to complete as proof of delivery. The following example is what I used on the POD section of my delivery notes.

Items received by:

Sign name:....................................................................

Print name (BLOCK CAPITALS)...................................

Date:.............................. Time:...............................

If recipient fails to enter date/time goods are deemed to be delivered on time.

Another useful option for me would be to be the ability to add a collection address.

Hi again,

Question 1

@Nathan - could you kindly elaborate a bit more about the quantity dispatched/outstanding balance, ideally phrasing it as a user story. We are much more likely to provide you with a good solution if we understand your needs, problems and how you go about achieving your goals/tasks; and user stories are great for this. Here is here an example of a user story that may apply to your scenario:

I send invoices to customers. Sometimes the customer pays the full amount, sometimes only part of it.

If the customer paid the full amount, we send all the items, unless some are out of stock. In which case, we send all the items we have. Say 20 were ordered and we only had 15 items in stock - we mark on the delivery note that 20 were ordered, 15 are dispatched with this delivery, and 5 are due. When we have additional items in stock, we send the other 5, with the delivery note saying that 20 were ordered, 15 were already dispatched (on date X), 5 are in this delivery, and 0 are due.

Could you use this style to explain your needs? Could you also write a user story that includes the outstanding balance requirement?

Question 2

When removing the company details, would there ever be a need to put another company details instead?

Question 3

@Stuart

Just to clarify, you need these delivery notes as a separate feature, or would they always be linked to an invoice? In other words, the current idea is to add a delivery note option when you view an invoice. Would you ever need a delivery note when there is no corresponding invoice?

Thanks

If the customer orders and we do not have the full quantity in stock then we would need to send what we have which should show as 'Quantity Dispatched' and then the delivery note would have the column next to it with 'Outstanding Balance' for any quantity left to to be sent to full fill the order.

Ideally if sending to a 3rd party the customer invoice address should stay then the delivery address would be of the 3rd party. All of the other company detail would then need to be omitted such as my company name, address, contact detail and vat numbers.

I wouldn't produce a delivery note without it being linked to an invoice, however I could produce one prior to producing an invoice. Occasionally I do deliver to multiple addresses meaning one invoice could have multiple delivery notes linked too it.

Hi Stuart,

Just to make sure I understand it correctly. When delivering to multiple addresses, does this mean that some items from the invoice are delivered to address X, while others to address Y?

Also,

What are your preferences regarding terms? 'Shipped'? 'Dispatched'? Something else maybe? Would you like to have an option choosing a term?

I prefer 'dispatched' but would live with 'shipped'

Yes that's correct Roey. Very occasionally it could happen in reverse too, but that's very rare.

I also wonder if there would be a way to link the delivery notes functions in with other Clear Books users? I know of at least one courier company I carry out sub-contract work for that uses Clear Books. It could be useful if they where able to produce a delivery note and forward it to my Clear Books account. I would then have a delivery note with their details on that I could print out and I would also be able to produce an invoice on the back of it that was linked/cross referenced to their delivery note.

I've had another thought, it might also be useful for some users who are like me in the courier/logistics/transport sector if there was an option to record the proof of delivery details for each delivery note when a delivery has been completed i.e. receiver name, date & time received. It would also useful to be able to forward this by email to the customer with the option of adding an attachment (in my case I would scan the signed delivery note using the camera on my smart phone and attach as a PDF).

Hi Roey,
It's great this is going to make progress.
Our needs are already covered, but are hopefully simple enough:
Option to print a delivery note, just like an invoice, but without prices, terms etc. And with somewhere for people to sign for the goods.
The ability to adjust the quantity ordered, dispatched, and outstanding would be good.
That, i think, would cover most peoples' basic requirements.
Andy

Hi Stuart,

I would recommend you propose these last two ideas as an new idea - they seem to me rather courier-specific, and will serve only a small group of our users (as such we might make your proposal a toggle feature - so not to overload the interface with features many users don't need).

But in principle, the current idea is that every invoice will have 'deliveries', where you can break the invoice into multiple deliveries. As such, we can include per delivery a completed form (with receiver name, date, and time); attach a scan to it; and email option for the completed note.

As for your first proposal, I think an elegant solution for this would be to allow a company using ClearBooks to share some invoices with specific users (so you will be their user), allowing you the ability to edit the deliveries. So instead of sub-contractors couriers using ClearBooks themselves, they will be granted access to the parent company delivery mechanism.

It's great to learn of these requirements, as they do help with the design of the current delivery note mechanism, but I doubt the last two idea will be popular enough to be prioritised. But still, I would wait until will roll-out the delivery note feature and then post a new idea with the proposal above. The more votes the idea will get, the quicker we are likely to implement it.

Another question I have is whether you need a feature allowing you mark a delivery as 'dispatched', and would you benefit from an option to also mark a delivery as 'completed'.

In other words, how common is it to track delivery compilation, and how important is it to mark a delivery as such in the system?

If we go down that path, bare in mind we may also need to introduce a status such as 'returned', 'bounced' or 'rejected' - when the goods where dispatched but never reached their destination and were returned to the sender'

I would track outside of clearbooks

Tracking stock would be great, but probably a much bigger project than adding delivery notes.

Right,

Please see the following links to the wireframes.

We will currently offer base functionality only (multi deliveries will be prioritised based on demand).

Let us know if there's anything else you need.

Before clicking edit: https://www.dropbox.com/s/5oq1tuwmcfeidfk/Delivery%20Note%20Before%20Edit.png
After clicking edit: https://www.dropbox.com/s/qoepxzumm33w1v0/Delivery%20Note%20After%20Edit.png

Thanks!

looks good! when will it be active?

1 April is the current deployment estimation.

Looks great Roey. We currently have a section underneath the signature that reads...
"Signing tis delivery note implies acceptance with our Trading Terms and Conditions"
We also have a bit "please inform us of any problems or shortages immediately on xxxxx"
Therefore, it may be good if you could have a 'free type box' for users to enter different content, underneath the signature section.

I'm assuming that we'll be able to use the company logo, as per invoices/quotes?

Another thing for me, would be to have the Customer Contact shown on the delivery note, not just the company address.

Also a delivery note reference - this could be something similar to the invoice reference, just prefixed with a D

Cheers
Adam

Hi Adam,

Of course we can, and would. The only question is whether in its current form the solution is unusable to you.

We have intentionally limited the functionality of the current solution so we can deploy it quickly. If we add more options and functions, the current design would become very cumbersome. To give one example, more options in the edit panel mean you see less of the actual note copy (ie, proof), which means you'll have to do more scrolling. We have better solutions in the pipe line, but they will take longer to implement.

The next big task on ClearBooks is a redesign of the invoice view/edit pages, due in estimated 8 weeks. This redesign will offer a much more intuitive way to enter, edit and deal with invoices; configure the view and content of the invoice customer copy; and those of the delivery note. Behind the scenes, the current template mechanism will go through dramatic improvements.

So the question is whether you are OK with the provided minimal solution, given it will only be around for roughly 8 weeks? We will implement critical stuff in this design if you find it so, but I'd argue that given delivery notes are not offered at the moment, having them without a logo for 8 weeks is not so critical?

Regardless, all the suggestions you have provided will be part of the redesign.

Please let me know.

This one would work for me for now, at least we would have something to work with for the time being.

Hi Roey
Completely understand and accept the above re functionality etc. Personally, I could use this without the logo, absolutely fine, but I would need to be able to put my 'free text' in underneath the signature box in order to use this. Personally, the scrolling doesn't bother me :-)
Cheers
Adam

I'm impressed with what you have done there Roey.

Hi Adam,

I've requested the addition of the free text. It does mean that the field has to be persisted to the server (so you don't have to re-enter the text every time), which means a bit more development work. But we should be fine.

Amazing thanks Roey, very much appreciated :-)

By the way,

I have intentionally refrained from annotating the wireframes, to see if the interface is clear enough by mere visual inspection.

Did anyone had issues understanding the screens? Possibly things you may have had to stop and think about for a second or two before understanding?

For instance, the editor (blue background) says 'Sender' while the note (white background) has 'From' (we will be changing 'From' to 'Sender' unless you object), or the editor says 'Signature' while the note says 'Received by' (we will be changing the editor to 'Received by'.

Delivery notes are now live. Please report any issues here.

As previously mentioned, this is just a temporal, feature-limited solution. So please keep the requests coming!

What menu is it under Roey? I can't find it. edit: Found it now :-)

I like it, but for it to be useful for me I also need to be able to edit the delivered to section as well as the senders section.

In my case the delivery address is almost always different from the invoice address and I'm sure this applies to other users too. Another useful feature might be an option for the invoice number to appear on the delivery note should there ever be the need to cross reference.

Hi,

Thanks CB for getting this functionality added. I note from the posts above this is an interim release that will be upgraded again soon so you may have covered my suggestion in that:

The Sender name is currently set to the Clearbooks contact name (our Director). I would like the sender name to either default to the login name or company name.

Plus it would be good to be able to add the Sent To contact person, who is often not the same as the ordered by or invoiced contact!

thanks.

Hi,

Can someone please tell me where to find the delivery notes, I have spent a fair bit of time looking and can't find them.

Thanks

Its OK I've found it :-)

Is there anyway to make it look more like the invoice with logo, customer ref etc... Just miss off the payment details & pricing.

Thanks

Hi Richard,

Sure. All of this will happen soon. The current solution is a temporal one just to provide some functionality.

We are looking at deploying something with all features and better interaction within 8 weeks.

Address line 2 is outputting '221' if left blank

Hi Nathan,

Could you please report this to our support team?

Thanks, Roey

Is there an update on when we may see a delivery note solution with more functionality?

This is still in the analysis stage, meaning the design phase haven't started yet. So a few months at least.

Hi Roey Is there any possible way with the current system to allow us to manually change the dispatch date??! It currently picks today's date, but I quite often like to print my next week's delivery notes in advance, so would be great to manually change this... thanks Adam

My worries is that requests will start mounting and instead of properly design the notes page we'll end up with a really horrible interface.

But I guess it is a rather quick change, and if so I'll see if one of our devs can do this. Won't be in the next 2 weeks though.

Hi Roey, Any progress on the delivery note changes? For me it's no use without a reference to the invoice displayed on the delivery note. This is surely standard on any delivery note? Our business is looking forward to a usable delivery note function! Thanks, Tim

Hi Tim,

The full-blown delivery note functionality is still being worked on as part of a revamp to templates.

But your request seems rather easy to implement, so we may just patch the current design.

If I understand correctly, all you want is for the invoice reference to show on the delivery note. I guess we can provide this as an option in the editor, and on the delivery note itself it will simply show above the 'dispatch date'.

Would this be fine?

Hi Roey.

I have spent a good few hours evaluating clear books. I will be moving from quick books, which I have been with for a number of years - the delivery/dispatch note is a very important document to my business. Most of the feature request above by other users are all valid points and are a feature as standard on quick books.

On another note, I do like the look and feel of CB, it looks simple to use and I love the customisable dashboard. - great stuff.

Allan

Hi Allan,

Thank you very much for your comments and praise of our services, we are happy it is exactly what you are after and look forward to you bringing your clients over to us. If there is anything at all you would like to know, or anything we can help you with, please just let us know.

Many Thanks

Chris

Thanks for the reply Roey. Ideally the delivery note would look pretty much like the invoice (i.e. company branding, all the information on the invoice but without the price information). At the moment for delivery notes we use an invoice theme that I created that doesn't show the price information. It looks fine but it's annoying to have to edit the invoice to change the theme between invoice and delivery note, and having to check each time before sending invoice emails to customer.

For me, the minimum additional information needed on the delivery note for it to be useful is:

• Our company name (Currently it displays a person's name rather than company name. I know it can be edited manually but is pretty tedious to do change manually each time.)
• Invoice number
• Reference, as per the invoice (we use this for the customer purchase order number ususally, and that information is essential info on the deliver note for the big hospitals we deliver to)

Thanks Tim

Would it possible to select multiple invoices and export the delivery notes to a single PDF (much like you can already do with the invoices themselves)?

Regards,