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How is an order verified?

Verification

Several things happen when an order is verified:

  1. Setting dropship orders to shipped.
  2. Checking for double order numbers
  3. Setting up prepack
  4. Address standardisation and validation
  5. Hashing email addresses
  6. Blocked countries, postcodes, email addresses, products
  7. Setting up added and split products
  8. Searching for products using the SKU
  9. Transfer order to the supplier’s warehouse
  10. Move large products to a separate order
  11. Checking customs information (pro forma).
  12. Dangerous goods.
  13. Applying the channel’s shipper options to all orders.
  14. Splitting the order by price.
  15. Applying the ‘insured shipping from order value’ setting.
  16. Surprise pack per product. It is possible to specify that a product should always come with packing instructions.
  17. Check backorder. A check is performed to make sure all products are in stock. If that is not the case, the order will be given the status Backorder. A shipper will be selected, but there will not be a scheduled shipping date and the order will not be prepared for picking.
  18. Reserve stock. If an order is not a backorder, a stock reservation will be made. By default, a stock reservation is also made for backorders, Etransit orders and blocked orders, but this option can be disabled. Stock reservations ensure that orders are processed in the correct order.
  19. Choose shipper. A shipper is chosen for the order. See ‘shipper choice‘ for more information.
  20. Choosing a planned shipping date.
  21. Preparing the order to be picked. The ordered items are deducted from the available stock and allocated to the order.

Address standardisation and validation

When verifying an order, the address is first standardised and then validated. The delivery address and the billing address are both standardised. The delivery address is always verified. For shipments sent to a pick-up point, the billing address is also verified. The billing address is given to the shipper for shipments sent to a pick-up point, so the shipper can make sure they are handing a parcel over to the correct consumer.

Address standardisation

The standardisation process consists of the following steps:

  • The country, which may have been entered as e.g. ‘Belgium‘, is turned into the correct two-letter country code
  • The postcode is standardised: for countries that use a numerical postcode (e.g. Belgium and Germany), all non-numerical characters are removed. For countries that also use letters in their postcodes (e.g. the Netherlands), all characters that are not a letter or number are removed.
  • If no house number was given for Belgian or Dutch addresses (e.g. because the entire address was entered into the ‘street‘ field), an attempt is made to separate the house number.

Separating house numbers for Dutch and Belgian addresses
Sometimes, an address is given in a single field, i.e. street + house number (+ optional suffix) all in one field. For Dutch and Belgian addresses, we will first attempt to separate the address to determine whether a house number was given and if this house number is a numerical value. We use certain rules drawn up by PostNL for this. These rules are described here: https://www.postnl.nl/klantenservice/bestellen-en-downloaden/documentatie-downloaden/kix-code/ (ToolKIX Pro for software developers and then the Word manual in the zip file).
The ‘RiskKIX table‘ (which contains a list of postcodes for which the street has a number in its name) must be updated manually. More information about how to do this can be found in the IT wiki.

Address validation

After standardisation, the address is validated. If an address is invalid, the order will be blocked.

  • The name, street, city and country code must all be present
  • The country code must be a valid country code
  • The postcode must have the correct format (e.g. four digits in Belgium). The country table contains regular expressions for this.
  • In the Netherlands and Belgium, a house number must also be given and it must be a numerical value
  • Additional address validations for the shipper: some shippers perform additional shipper-specific address validation steps. See the page of the shipper in question for more information about the validation steps that are performed

When printing the shipping label during the E-check, the shipper may perform additional checks. (If the label is retrieved from the shipper’s system.) The shipper’s checks may be ‘stricter‘ than our own (as described above). In that case, the label cannot be generated and the order is marked as a wild card. The wild card notification contains the shipper’s error message. This can be used to correct the address and another attempt can be made to print out the shipping label.

Maximum field length
Monta uses a maximum field length of 255 characters for the name and address fields. Additional characters are cut off when the order is imported or an error will occur during the import. Every shipper has their own value for the maximum number of characters in the name and address fields. Check the page of the shipper in question for more information.