By: Maciek Mika
Lumber Sales

Shipping errors are a tremendous pain to yourself and also to your client.. They cost a fortune, hurt your reputation, upset customers and generally cause many headaches. When the customer notifies you of the incorrect shipment, you now have the cost to retrieve the wrong materials (pickup, possible repackaging, restocking fees or possibility of not being able to resell it).

Then comes all of the accounting to correct the inventory, debit and credit the customer account, plus the added time that is almost guaranteed to be spent explaining the paperwork to others.

Major ways to prevent the mishaps are:

• Have the sales representative repeat quantity and product information back to the customer before entering and shipping the order to prevent errors.
• Having e-commerce and interface directly to your email and/or texted to your cell phone.