Printing in Ongoing WMS

Table of contents

Introduction

Ongoing WMS can print several different kinds of documents, including:

  • Delivery notes
  • Receipt notes
  • Pallet labels
  • Article labels
  • Customs proformas
  • Shipping labels (fetched from shipping platform or carrier)

Printing documents generated by Ongoing WMS

If the document is generated directly by Ongoing WMS, then there are two ways of printing it.

Printing via PDF

This is the most basic method. Ongoing WMS does not have any direct communication with the printer:

  1. Ongoing WMS generates a PDF.
  2. The user downloads the PDF and opens it locally in Chrome, or Adobe Acrobat, or another PDF reader.
  3. The user prints the document from the PDF reader.
The problem with this method is the additional step required to open the PDF in an external program. This can become very time-consuming if you have many printouts to do.

Generating a PDF from Ongoing WMS generally works like this:

  1. You mark the objects (e.g. articles or orders) which you want to print.
  2. You press the name of the document you want to print.
  3. Ongoing WMS generates a PDF which is opened by your browser.
The below example shows how you would print an article label for article number 123123:

Manually print article barcode label in Ongoing WMS

The generated labels will show up in a separate window:

Ongoing WMS example article label

Printing via the Ongoing Printer Service

It is possible for Ongoing WMS to trigger a printout directly on a printer at your location, without forcing the user to open another program. For this to work, you need to have a server at your location which has access to the printers. On this server you also need to install the Ongoing Printer service.

Using this method, this is what happens when an automatic printout is triggered:

  1. Ongoing WMS generates a PDF.
  2. This PDF is automatically sent to the print service.
  3. The print service sends the PDF to a printer at your location.
Please contact us if you are interested in this method. We will help you with the installation of the Ongoing Printer Service and also discuss exactly how these automatic printouts can be triggered. They can be triggered from a hand-held unit, so that e.g. when an order has been fully picked then the system automatically prints a delivery note for the order.

Printing shipping labels via connected software

Shipping labels are fetched from a connected software solution such as a shipping platform or directly from the carrier and printed in Ongoing WMS. For this to work, one or more integrations to shipping platforms or integrations directly to carriers are required.

Print shipping label in Ongoing WMS

Shipping platforms or carriers return the shipping label immediately to Ongoing WMS, as a PDF or ZPL. This means that the following flow is possible:

  1. Ongoing WMS asks the connected software to create a shipment booking.
  2. The connected software returns the PDF or ZPL label to Ongoing WMS.
  3. An automatic printout is triggered via the Ongoing Printer Service.
  4. Ongoing WMS saves the PDF or ZPL, so that you can print it manually later if needed.

The shipping platform handles the printing

Certain shipping platforms (such as Cargonizer or Logtrade) have functionality which enables Ongoing WMS to ask them to print the label at your location. What happens is:

  1. Ongoing WMS asks the connected software to create a shipping booking and to print the labels at the same time.
  2. The connected software prints the label at your location.

Exactly how this automatic printout is handled is up to the connected software.

Start using Ongoing WMS