Stop Guessing, Start Shipping: Fix Fulfillment in Business Central

Welcome and Agenda

Hey, good morning or afternoon everybody. Thanks for joining us for this discussion on how we can manage fulfillment in Business Central. Today we’re going to cover the full process for fulfilling orders after the orders have been entered.

We’ll go through who we are (in case you don’t know us), talk about the various applications we have for fulfilling orders, and then mostly jump in and look at how the software works. We’ll wrap up with a summary, probably around 45 minutes or so depending on how many questions you have.

If you do have questions, feel free to enter them in the question box in the GoToWebinar panel. I’ll do my best to answer them as we go. I also noted a bunch of the questions people had at sign up, and I’ll try to address those too. If I don’t get to something during the session, we’ll send you an email with the answers after the fact.

About Insight Works

A little bit about Insight Works: we’ve been around for about 10 years now, and in that time we’ve built a lot. We’ve got a ton of applications, and a lot of usage of those applications—mostly in manufacturing and warehousing, and we also do retail now.

Anytime you’re dealing with physical product—receiving it, putting it away, manufacturing it, selling it, shipping it—those sorts of things are where we come in and can help.

We work primarily through our reseller partners. If you have questions about any applications, you can go to our website for videos and detailed information. For pricing, check with your Business Central partner. They’re likely a reseller of ours already. If not, you can contact us directly, or talk to your existing partner and they can reach out to us.

Free Apps Overview

Part of our product stack includes a bunch of free applications. We actually have over 30 free applications and utilities available. Some are specific to products, but there are several high-volume, key free apps we make available to end users.

These are all available on Business Central Cloud. If you’re on the SaaS version of Business Central, you can grab these off AppSource and away you go. Some are also available on-premises—typically if you’re on-prem and you have one of our other products, you can get a number of these free products as well—but generally these are aimed at SaaS.

I won’t go into a ton of detail, but things like enhanced planning for forecasting and the planning worksheet are much better than the standard Business Central Planning Worksheet. There are also utilities for cloud printing, managing your data, generating barcodes, and more. These are heavily used by partners and customers.

Key Free Apps for Fulfillment

There are a few free apps that are particularly relevant:

• Graphical Schedule: more for manufacturing—show production orders with drag-and-drop—but when you install it you also get a pick scheduler. That can estimate how long picks take based on historical values (or your own estimates), and you can assign and schedule picks through the graphical schedule.
• Doc Extender: simple drag-and-drop document management. The big advantage over built-in Business Central is that it stores documents on SharePoint, giving you a full document management solution in Business Central and SharePoint for free.
• Order Ship Express: a free shipping application that generates shipping labels, tracking numbers, and shipping rates inside Business Central without needing an external application. If you don’t have your own discounted carrier accounts, you can use built-in accounts to access discounted rates. Setup is quick, and you can ship directly from Business Central.
• WMS Express: free warehouse management to add barcoding to Business Central. It’s a scaled-down version of the full warehouse management solution and supports inventory counts, receiving, picking/shipping, and bin movements. If that’s all you need, this can be enough.

Apps Covered Today and the Fulfillment Flow

For today, we’re focusing on the applications that help with fulfillment. We’re not going deep into the Enhanced Planning Pack, which is more about replenishment—getting stock into the warehouse or production facility so you can ship it out.

Once stock is in the door, we need to get it out the door. That’s where the Order Fulfillment Worksheet comes in. It answers the question: What can I ship today? If you walk in as a shipping manager or warehouse supervisor and you’ve got a stack of orders that came in overnight, figuring out what can realistically go out the door can be tough. This tool tells you what you can ship and automates a lot of the process.

After we know what we can ship, we have to pick product. There are two options: WMS Express (free) and Warehouse Insight (subscription full WMS solution). You can run paperless and enter quantities manually, but ideally you use barcoding.

Then we ship it out the door using either Order Ship Express (free) or Dynamic Ship (more advanced). Order Ship Express is limited to domestic parcel shipments only, while Dynamic Ship supports international shipping (including customs details), multi-carrier rate shopping, and LTL/full truckload.

Why Barcoding Matters

If you don’t have barcoding, it’s worth considering. The technology has been around for decades and is easy to adopt. You should have vendors barcode items where possible, and in retail/consumer goods you can often use the existing barcodes already on packaging.

The biggest benefit is physical verification. If you’re scanning the barcode on the package, you can’t ship the wrong product. If you scan the wrong item, the system won’t allow you to proceed. Barcoding also improves other efficiencies throughout the facility. WMS Express is the easiest way to start with barcoding in Business Central.

Order Fulfillment Worksheet Demo Setup

Let’s jump into Business Central and assume orders are already being entered—coming from the website or manually entered. I’m walking in as the shipping manager or warehouse manager and asking: what do I get the team working on today?

I open up the Order Fulfillment Worksheet and it crunches the numbers very quickly for the location. There’s a performance timing message you might not want turned on all the time, but I left it on to illustrate that it’s fast—and also to show the setup options.

Quick apology here: it looks like screen sharing didn’t start properly in GoToWebinar for part of the demo. That’s thoroughly annoying and you missed some of the earlier visuals. I’m going to recap the key slide quickly and then continue with the demo.

Order Fulfillment Worksheet Settings

In the Order Fulfillment Worksheet setup, there are a bunch of options you can control:

• Combine shipments (prompt, automatic, or never).
• Allow partial quantities on warehouse shipments (Business Central doesn’t allow this easily out of the box).
• Exclude blocked bins when bins are mandatory.
• Exclude blocked item tracking, like blocked lots in QC (so stock exists, but isn’t pickable).
• Exclude inventory based on expiration cutoffs (for example, don’t ship goods expiring within the next few days).

Order Fulfillment Worksheet works with or without bins, with or without warehouse shipments, and with or without warehouse picks. It evaluates orders in a location and determines whether you have enough available stock to ship, based on what’s actually pickable in the warehouse.

How Allocation Works

In the worksheet, you’ll see allocation statuses like “partial” or “fully allocated.” The system looks at the items on each sales order and determines what can realistically be picked. You might have 100 in stock, but if 80 are blocked or in bins you can’t pick from, the worksheet treats only the remaining quantity as available.

It also dynamically assigns available inventory across the list of orders. For example, if you have eight available to pick and you allocate six to an earlier order, then the next order sees only two available. Orders lower down the list don’t get access to inventory already allocated above.

By default, allocation is based on date—the earliest ship date gets first crack at inventory. This automatically manages backorders. If an older order from October couldn’t be shipped at the time, when new stock arrives, that older order will get priority by default.

You can also sort and filter by other criteria, like order value, if you want your highest-value orders to get priority instead of earliest ship date. You can create views to filter by customer, shipping window, and more, then decide what you want to ship.

Handling “Ship Complete” and Reservations

You may see a case where an order is partially allocated but marked “not available to ship.” One common reason is Shipping Advice set to “Complete,” meaning the order can’t ship unless it ships complete.

In those cases you can leave it until everything arrives, or you can reserve inventory against that specific order while you wait. The point is: if you’re using Order Fulfillment Worksheet, you typically don’t need reservations at order entry. Reservations are often a pain—warnings, errors, extra work, and sales staff have to think about warehouse allocation. With the worksheet, allocation happens automatically when you create picks, and quantities are effectively committed through the pick/shipment process.

Creating Picks and Shipments

Once you decide what to ship, you can select orders and choose to create picks. If your settings prompt for combining shipments, you can combine multiple sales orders into a single shipment.

When generating picks, you can use standard Business Central options—one pick per customer, one pick per shipment, wave picking by zone, and so on. You can also print the picks as they’re created, or skip printing and have them show up on handheld devices. The picks bring in the quantities that were allocated for each order, so warehouse staff can execute picking based on what’s actually available.

If you’re not using warehouse shipments or warehouse picks, that’s fine too. You can print pick instructions (similar to what you’d get from the sales order) and pick on paper.

Backorders Automatically Become Shippable

To illustrate backorders: an order might show as not available because stock isn’t there. When a purchase order is received and inventory arrives, the next time the worksheet recalculates (or if it’s scheduled to run automatically), that backorder can flip to fully available to ship—without anyone managing it on a clipboard.

As stock becomes available, the system automatically allocates the appropriate quantities and surfaces what can now ship.

Executing Picks with WMS Express and Warehouse Insight

Once picks are created, you execute them either by printing them or using handheld devices. WMS Express provides the basics—inventory counts, receiving, moving, and pick/ship depending on your configuration. Warehouse Insight does more, but the core idea is the same: open a pick, see the list of items to pick, and scan barcodes to confirm items and quantities.

You can scan vendor barcodes or barcodes already on packaging, as long as you have item references in Business Central. You can optionally display item pictures, require bin scans, force quantity entry, and configure how scanning behaves. WMS Express can run on phones (using the camera), or on dedicated low-cost devices with built-in scanners.

Shipping with Order Ship Express

For shipping, Order Ship Express can be used directly from a sales order, or from a “Sales Order Shipping” page in Business Central that’s more warehouse-friendly (it focuses on shipping details without showing pricing/costing).

To generate shipping labels, you enter package details (dimensions and weight), optionally choose predefined carrier packaging, and then get rates or generate the label. You can adjust options like signature requirements and see how that affects cost.

Once you generate the label, it prints automatically (for example using the PrintNode connector). You can reprint, preview, and the label includes tracking information. It also adds shipping charges to the order with both the carrier cost and what you charge the customer.

Order Ship Express is quick to set up and supports discounted rates even if you don’t have your own carrier accounts. The tradeoff is it’s better suited for lower-volume scenarios because you typically work from the sales order or sales order shipping page.

Shipping with Dynamic Ship and Packaging Verification

In higher-volume situations, Dynamic Ship is often the better fit. A common workflow is: product is picked (on paper or handheld), dropped at a packing station, and then packaged for shipment.

Dynamic Ship can support a packaging process where you scan a pick ticket, create boxes, and scan items into each box. This provides physical verification at shipping—if you scan the wrong item, the system won’t allow it. You can configure scanning so each scan counts as quantity one, or you can enter quantities manually. You can also package using mouse and keyboard if you prefer, or keep it simple by just entering box and weight details like in Order Ship Express.

The system can calculate package weights, and it can also read weights from a scale if you have one. Once packaged, you generate a shipping label. If the carrier isn’t predetermined, the system can rate shop across carriers and show delivery dates and costs, then you choose a service and print labels for each box.

A big added benefit is capturing lot numbers and serial numbers at shipping. Even if you don’t track lots/serials in inventory, scanning them at ship time allows you to track exactly which lot or serial numbers were shipped to a customer.

Customer Notifications, Tracking, and Freight Charges

Dynamic Ship can trigger emails to customers with tracking links. The email can be simple or fully customized—listing items shipped, including pictures, and optionally attaching PDFs like invoices or packing slips.

Tracking links can take customers to a branded tracking page with your logo and links, while still showing carrier-level tracking detail. You can also send them to the carrier’s website or your customer portal, depending on how you want to configure it.

On the order side, shipping charges can be managed with rules—markups, discounts, handling charges, free shipping thresholds, and more. You can report on whether you’re making or losing money on shipping. You can also track primary tracking numbers and box-level tracking numbers, including what contents were in each box.

Scheduling the Order Fulfillment Worksheet

In addition to running the worksheet interactively, you can schedule it to run automatically. For example, it might run every 30 minutes between 7:00 and 3:30 each day, looking for orders that are released, fully available to ship, and shipping within the next couple of days. It can automatically generate and print picks as availability changes—like when backorders are received or new orders arrive.

You can also build more specific schedules, like a daily run at 4:00 focused on small UPS orders so you can squeeze in last-minute picks before the carrier pickup.

Recap: End-to-End Fulfillment Workflow

The fulfillment workflow looks like this:

• Figure out what you can ship today using Order Fulfillment Worksheet.
• Automatically generate shipments and pick tickets (warehouse shipments/picks/inventory picks), or print pick instructions if you’re not using those.
• Execute picking with barcodes using WMS Express or Warehouse Insight, or pick on paper.
• Generate shipping labels with Order Ship Express (simple, domestic parcel) or Dynamic Ship (advanced, packaging verification, international, LTL/FTL, documentation).

Value Proposition and Pricing Notes

From a value perspective, you’re not going to miss another backorder shipment—Order Fulfillment Worksheet tells you when you can ship backorders and allocates inventory automatically. It removes guesswork and prevents warehouse teams from chasing partially pickable work that shouldn’t have been released.

Barcodes help you avoid mis-ships and improve efficiency. Use vendor barcodes whenever possible. If you’re just starting, WMS Express is an easy on-ramp to barcoding in Business Central at no cost.

Cost-wise: Order Fulfillment Worksheet is $150 per month (not per user), and it’s per company. WMS Express and Order Ship Express are completely free. If you need more functionality, you move to Warehouse Insight and Dynamic Ship, and pricing varies based on the number of licenses.

Resources and Closing

If you want more information, you can go to fulfillmentfordynamics.com for details on Order Fulfillment Worksheet. On our main site you’ll find videos for Warehouse Insight, Dynamic Ship, Order Ship Express, and the rest of the apps, along with the knowledge base, YouTube channel, and lots of technical details.

I apologize again for the technical issues up front with the screen sharing. Hopefully you still got something out of it. I didn’t get through all the questions during the session because of the screen sharing issues and the chat activity, but if I haven’t answered your questions, you’ll get an email with those answers afterward.

Thanks everybody for attending, and I hope you have a great rest of the week. If you’re celebrating Thanksgiving this week, I hope you have a very good time. Thanks everyone.