Shipping provides the ability to create shippers with customized layouts and/or customized data to comply with statutory requirements or common business practice. The customization can be performed by anyone with the current software and access to a Progress development environment, including third-party developers and end users.

Shipping is designed so that the customization requirements are minimal and localized. To create a new customer shipper, you need to create or modify only one Progress procedure, even though the results of the customization can be visible in a multiple functional area. This prevents customizations from adversely affecting other functionality and minimizes their maintenance costs when later updates are installed.

QAD provides a procedure, sofmsv01.p, to print a shipping document in a standard format for any outgoing shipment. The procedure sofmsv01.p is fully functional, but is designed to serve also as a model for end-user customization. Customized shipper formats can be added by copying and modifying this standard procedure. Each shipper, whether custom or standard, is supported by a single procedure.

A shipment is associated with a specific print format, either standard or customer, through the use of the shipper’s Document Format field, visible when maintaining the shipment. Each document format is associated with a specific printing procedure, such as sofmsv01.p, through the use of the document format’s Form Code field, visible when maintaining the document format. The two-character form code corresponds to the last two characters of the name of the procedure. The remaining characters of the procedure name are fixed.

Shipping allows a form code to be permanently associated with each shipping transaction, enabling you to print shippers of various formats in a single print run.