ChannelEngine: shipments

About this document

This document describes the shipment process on ChannelEngine, including best practices and common scenarios.

Table of contents

Introduction

Creating a shipment

Shipments overview

When is a shipment exported?

• Example A
• Example B

Carrier mapping

Default shipment settings

Introduction

Once you have successfully processed and shipped an order, or at least prepared it for shipment, you need to create a shipment on ChannelEngine to 'close' the order. As long as the order is still marked as In progress, ChannelEngine continues to reserve the stock for that order, so it is crucial to submit the correct shipment information.

Creating a shipment

With plugins like Adobe Commerce (née Magento) and WooCommerce, you can create a shipment at the regular location in your webshop software. This is automatically exported to ChannelEngine. If you do not use a plugin, ERP connection, or an API connection, you can also use the ChannelEngine interface to create a shipment.

From the order overview, you can select the 'truck' icon next to the order. Alternatively, you can open the order details, select Create shipment at the bottom of the page, and fill in the required information. Depending on the channel, you can choose between shipping the full order or just partially. Whether partial shipments are possible is determined by the order support for a channel, which is visible on the order level if you use ChannelEngine's API. You then fill out the following fields:

• Shipment method - the carrier responsible for fulfilling the order. E.g.: DHL.
• Tracking code - the tracking code assigned to the shipment package.
• Return tracking code - the return tracking code for the shipment package, required by only a few marketplaces (e.g.: Zalando, OTTO Market, About You). 
• Merchant shipment number - the unique shipment reference you assign to the shipment. If you do not have a Merchant shipment number, which most systems automatically generate, you can fill in the Order number or any other unique number. Bear in mind that you cannot reuse a Merchant shipment number, it has to be unique.
• Ships from (optional) - the stock location (in case you use the stock locations feature) or the country where you ship the package from.

Shipments overview

For an overview of all created shipments, go to Orders > Shipments in the left-hand side menu.

That section shows list of all shipments, arranged from the newest to the oldest IDs. The individual columns and their headers show what type of data they contain and, by selecting the 'eye' icon by each shipment, you can see the shipment details. The top of the screen contains a search function and three filters.

• Search - allows you to search for specific shipments, based on the ChannelEngine order ID, the ChannelEngine shipment ID, the Channel order number, the Merchant order number, the Merchant shipment number, and the (last) Name on the invoice address.
• Channel filter - allows you to filter the shipments for one or more specific channels. If you deselect all, all channels are included in the result.
• Type filter - allows you to filter on a specific 'type' of shipment. As cancelations are also shown in a separate menu option and not many sellers allow backorders, this is not a commonly used filter.
• Status filter - allows you to filter on the two different types of statuses possible for a shipment: Pending and Closed. Pending shipments are missing information, therefore they are not exported to the channel. Closed shipments are complete, and depending on the Channel status they may or may not be exported to the channel.

When is a shipment exported?

Whether a shipment is successfully exported to a channel depends on the following criteria:

• ID - the unique identifier ChannelEngine has for a shipment.
• Merchant shipment number - your own unique shipment identifier.
• Created date - the date the shipment was created on ChannelEngine.
• Shipment date - the date when the shipment was created in the source system (i.e.: the marketplace). Note that Shipment date is only set and displayed if that data is available.
• Updated date - the date the shipment was last updated on ChannelEngine.
• Status - the current status of the shipment. There are two possible values: Pending and Closed. Only Closed shipments are exported to a channel.
• Channel status - the status of what was exported to the channel. There are three possible values: Not exported yet, Exported at [date], and Error.
• Fulfillment - shows which party was responsible for the fulfillment of the order. This is either the merchant or the channel, with the latter labeled accordingly (e.g.: Amazon.de).
• Shipment method - the carrier handling the fulfillment. This is a mandatory field. If it is left empty, the status of the order remains on Pending until a valid value is submitted.
• Track and trace - the track-and-trace code of the shipment. It is a mandatory field, with the exception of manually created Briefpost shipments. If it is left empty, the status of the order remains on Pending until a valid value is submitted. For most channels, this track-and-trace code combined with the correct carrier forms the track-and-trace link, so it is important this code is valid.
• Track-and-trace link - this is not visible as a separate attribute on a shipment, but forms a link on the track-and-trace code if submitted. Most channels create their own links, but some (such as API channels) fetch them from ChannelEngine.

Example A

The above order is marked as Pending, which causes all shipment exports for channels to ignore it for export.

The status is Pending because it has no Shipment method and no Tracking code, which can be seen by the orange warning labels. An empty shipment can only be created via the ChannelEngine Merchant API. To update the shipment with a shipment method, a PUT /v2/shipments/{merchantShipmentNo} call can be used.

If a 'Shipping method' is added via the API

If a method is added via the API, the shipment is not exported to the channel as it is still considered incomplete, and its status remains on Pending until it has both a Shipment method and a Track-and-trace code.

If a 'Shipping method' is added via the ChannelEngine web interface

On the web interface, the same logic applies to the API – with one exception. You can select the option Briefpost (which has no track-and-trace code), a track-and-trace code is not required, and the status changes to Closed. This is not possible via the API because Briefpost is not automatically recognized, so you must submit a placeholder track-and-trace code in this scenario.

Scenarios

Channel: Bol.com Method: briefpost Carrier mapping: none Result: accepted by bol.com Reason: briefpost is a valid shipment method, and no track-and-trace code is needed 

Channel: Bol.com Method: PostNL Track-and-trace code: none Carrier mapping: none Result: neither exported nor accepted by Bol.com Reason: PostNL is not a valid carrier name (it must be carrier mapped to TNT), and this method requires a track-and-trace code 

Channel: Bol.com Method: Eigen levering (Courier) Track-and-trace code: none Carrier mapping: Eigen levering - Courier Result: neither exported nor accepted by Bol.com Reason: a valid carrier is submitted, but a track-and-trace code is still required 

If only a 'Track-and-trace code' is added

If there is only a track-and-trace code and no method, this shipment is not exported to the channel as it is deemed incomplete, and the status remains on Pending until it has both a method and a track-and-trace code.

If both a 'Shipping method' and 'Track-and-trace code' are added

The shipment is considered complete (the status should change to Closed) and this shipment is exported to the channels. Whether the channel processes it correctly still depends on the submitted method, the carrier mapping, and what the channel accepts.

Scenarios

Channel: Amazon.nl Method: DHL Track-and-trace code: none Carrier mapping: none Result: not exported Reason: even though Amazon does not require carrier mapping, the name of the submitted method should match 100% with what Amazon accepts – and there is a track-and-trace code 

Channel: Bol.com Method: PostNL Track-and-trace code: 123 Carrier mapping: PostNL - TNT Result: not accepted by Bol.com Reason: a valid carrier is submitted, but the track-and-trace code is incorrect. Bol.com expects at least four characters, and validates the field - special characters also result in errors 

Example B

The above example is fully correct and accepted by channels, as shown in the Channel status section. The order has a correct shipment method, carrier mapped to TNT, and a correct track-and-trace code.

Carrier mapping

In order to 'translate' your shipment method to carriers accepted by channels, you can use Carrier mappings under Mappings > Carrier mappings to automatically set your own carrier names to channel-specific carriers.

Your shipping method - the name of the shipment method/carrier name submitted on shipments. Note that the name has to match 100%, in the above case this rule is not applied if 'post nl' is submitted on the shipment itself. When you start typing the name of your shipping method, the system checks the existing shipping methods in ChannelEngine's database.
Customer delivery country - this is relevant if you use different carriers per country. 'DPD' is a good example. While this is a valid carrier on its own, the subcarriers 'DPD NL', 'DPD BE', 'DPD DE', etc. are also valid. By setting the Customer delivery country you can differentiate the carrier per country.
Channel - displays the list of available carriers for that specific channel. Note these lists are comprised of the carrier abbreviation as used in the API of that channel. Thus some names can differ. E.g.: on bol., PostNL is TNT, Bezorgafspraak is courier, etc. For more information on this, bol.'s Transporters page.

Default shipment settings

ChannelEngine offers the option to set a default shipment method, in case of empty shipments waiting for track-and-trace information. However, in most cases, this is not advised.

To find this option go to Settings > Settings. Scroll down to find the Shipment settings. By providing default tracked and untracked shipment methods, as well as a value in minutes, you can create shipments without track-and-trace-information which are not immediately exported. However, almost no channels accept a tracked shipping method without a track-and-trace code, so its main function is to set shipments as 'mailbox packages' while waiting for the track-and-trace information.