Quickstart

Sign in for the first time

Open your EMS URL. The default administrator account is seeded automatically. Sign in with username admin and password admin.

Once signed in you'll land on the dashboard. The sidebar has every module — Dashboard, Shipments, Consignees, Receiving, Inventory, Storage, Production, Stamp Orders, Logistics, Reports, Settings.

Add a consignee

EMS is consignee-aware from intake: every shipment is owned by exactly one consignee. So before you create a shipment, add the customer / brand that owns it.

1. Click Consignees in the sidebar.
2. Click the + New Consignee button.
3. Fill in the required fields: Code (a short identifier like "NORWOOD"), Name, primary address, and contact email.
4. Click Save.

Add a product

Products are SKUs you'll receive, stamp and dispatch — typically one row per flavour-size-nicotine combination.

1. Click Inventory in the sidebar (this is the products catalogue, separate from the live stock view in Storage).
2. Click + New Product.
3. Set the Brand, Name, Flavour, mL volume, Nicotine mg, and Category (e.g. Disposables).
4. Save.

You can also create products on-the-fly from the Receiving edit form when a box turns up with an unexpected variant — but it's cleaner to seed the catalog first.

Create your first shipment

The Shipments module owns the inbound side of the warehouse pipeline. A shipment moves through these stages: Documents Processing → Awaiting Customs → In Transit → Arrived → Customs Cleared → Ready for Pickup → Picked Up → Ready for Receiving → Received → Inventoried.

1. Click Shipments, then + New Shipment.
2. The wizard will walk you through:
   • AWB (Air Waybill number — unique per shipment)
   • Supplier name
   • Consignee (pick from step 2)
   • Flight date and estimated arrival
   • Optional: drag-drop the commercial invoice / packing list PDFs to extract line items automatically
   • Items — product + quantity per line
3. Click Create shipment. It'll appear in the list with status Documents Processing.

Upload the Notice of Arrival

The NOA is the document from your customs broker that triggers the freight pickup. Once it's uploaded, EMS:

• Records the actual skid count from the NOA (which may differ from the packing list)
• Asks you for an arrival date
• Auto-suggests a pickup date as arrival + 1 day (you can override)
• Caps the pickup at the truck capacity of 12 skids per trip — overflow stays in Ready for Pickup for a follow-up trip

1. Open the shipment from step 4.
2. Click Upload NOA.
3. Drag in the NOA PDF, enter the Skid count and Arrival date.
4. Confirm or override the suggested Schedule Pickup Date, then click Save NOA.

Confirm Received at Warehouse

When the truck arrives at the dock, mark it received. This is a separate step from "scanning boxes" so a manager can confirm physical arrival before the warehouse team starts the receiving flow.

1. Open Receiving in the sidebar.
2. The shipment will be in the Arrived — Confirm Receipt section.
3. Click Confirm Received. Status moves to Ready for Receiving.

Scan and skid the boxes

Now the warehouse team box-scans, builds skids and assigns them to zones.

1. From the Receiving page click Start Receiving on the confirmed shipment.
2. The Box Scanner shows your progress (how many stored, scanned, and total) and a scan field. Scan or type the box number, then click Lookup.
3. The confirm card shows the contents per the packing list. Adjust per-line:
   • Damaged — units physically damaged
   • Missing — units expected but absent
   • Good units updates automatically
4. Click Accept to Skid. The box appears in the Current Skid list. If you tagged any damage, the row turns alert-red with a chip showing the good-versus-total count.
5. Click Edit on a box in Current Skid to change its contents — the granular Damaged / Missing / Good fields are preserved.
6. Repeat for the rest of the boxes. When ready, pick the Zone + Slot in the Skid Builder panel and click Complete Skid.
7. For multi-skid shipments, repeat. When every box is on a completed skid, Finish Receiving moves the shipment to Inventoried.

Schedule a stamp production run

Now that boxes are inventoried, you can schedule a Production Order (PO) that consumes federal and / or provincial stamps.

1. Open Production Orders in the sidebar, click + New PO.
2. Pick the source shipment, then enter quantities per region (Federal, Ontario, Quebec, Alberta, Manitoba). EMS shows you what's available based on the good quantity (damaged units don't count).
3. Drag the PO onto a weekday slot in the production calendar. Daily capacity caps prevent over-scheduling — you'll see a red-flag warning if you exceed.
4. Save the PO. It enters Open status, ready to execute.

To execute the run on production day:

5. Open Production (the workspace, not Production Orders).
6. Pick today's PO from the queue.
7. Scan boxes through the stamping line. EMS deducts from the right region's stamp ledger automatically.
8. When all units are stamped, the PO moves to Pending Verification.
9. A second user opens the PO and clicks Verify, optionally adjusting if scanned count differs from estimate.
10. On verify, EMS auto-creates Outbound records grouped by consignee and the PO moves to Completed.

Dispatch the outbound

1. Open Outbound in the sidebar.
2. Click the auto-generated outbound from step 8. Review the per-skid breakdown.
3. Click Generate BOL for the bill of lading PDF, and Generate packing list for the per-skid manifest.
4. When the truck is loaded, work through the loading checklist (each skid confirmed) and click Dispatch. Status moves to Dispatched and the customer is notified through the portal.

Pull a stamp-accounting report

1. Open Reports in the sidebar.
2. Pick Stamp Accounting, then the quarter.
3. You'll see opening balance, received, used, and closing balance per region (Federal plus every provincial region you’ve added).
4. Click Export PDF or Export Excel. The report is dated and signed by the user generating it.

That's the loop: shipment → receive → stamp → dispatch → report. Every step you just did is captured in the audit log; you can pull the full chain of custody for any single box from the Reports module.