Automating warehousing with SBA

This is an interesting question from the Small Business Accounting newsgroup that I thought might be beneficial to others on the topic of how to automate selling/pick/pack/ship operations between sales people and warehousing staff ina small business:

"rdewaal" wrote:
> How can I generate a pick list and Bill of Lading from a multi user
> installation. Sales would be taken in the office. Pick lists would be
> needed in the warehouse along with a Bill of Lading.

If you wanted to do this only using SBA, there is a way to do it. First, open the invoice and select Actions->Export to Word. (Be sure you do this from the menu so you can choose a Word template every time and preserve your default template used when selecting the Export to Word icon off the toolbar). Be sure to select a packing slip template so you don't reveal pricing to your warehousing people. In Word, select File->Send to->Mail Recipient (as attachment). In the new email form, fill in the email address of your warehouse person (assuming they have a computer and email), fill in the desired delivery in the subject field and click send. Warehousing people will be able to use their inbox as a list of tasks and will be able to prioritize based on the specified delivery date. Since documents are emailed as attachments, they can be printed out and sent to the customer with the shipment.

If your warehouse person doesn't have a computer/email/printer, you can always have the sales guy print it out instead of emailing and physically transport them a few times a day.

[Updated: 9/25 with slightly different recommendation since most will want to print out the pick list without an email header on it so they can include it in the shipment. Would be good for Microsoft to add an option to the email feature that lets users select to send the document as an attachment]