The Purpose of this document is to provide an outline on the functionality of Shippit. You will gain an insight of store setups, API Authentication requirements and a guide to help you decide how you want to integrate into Shippit for your order flow.

💡Example API payloads can be found in this link: Getting started with API payloads

💡Details on our API can be found in this link: Shippit API documentation

The API documentation will provide you samples on how to construct API calls, error messages and specific fields that determine the outcome on how Shippit will read your order.

In order you utilize our API you will need to use the Shippit API Key to authenticate your call against our API. The API Key is only allocated to one account and each Shippit account is designated to one location.

⚠️ If you are planning to book from multiple locations, you will need to use multiple Shippit accounts which, in turn will mean you will have to accommodate multiple API Keys. This is important to understand when you are planning on how to build out your integration against Shippit, as location allocation
must be in place before you submit your order.

Below is a sample on how you can find your API key within your account.

Our API is the most flexible way to utilize the Shippit Platform, however flexibility is very dependent on how much pre-allocation your platform performs prior sending the order to Shippit. Some Key Items you would want to think about are:

The following sections below will be a summary of what each API means to your Shippit account and advise on key aspects you would need to consider on how to process your orders into Shippit.

⚠️ The Order API is MANDATORY

Order API is your registration of your order into your Shippit Account. When registering the order, it is imperative that you populate as much detail as you can attached to the call in order for Shippit to allocate the correct carrier for that order.

The API documentation will provide samples on how you can construct these calls to suite the above. Shippit does have basic carton allocation logic if you do not know what your parcel dimensions are. However, its heavily recommended to allocate what your parcels is prior to sending the Order Call to maximize warehouse efficiency.

As part of the response in the Call, you will be provided a Tracking Number which is a Shippit reference that you will need to utilize for other API calls. This would be your Shippit reference for your order.

Quoting in Shippit can be used in a variety of different ways, normally we would recommend utilizing a Flat Rate Card matrix to avoid cart abandonment. However, there are certain instances where you may feel a quote from a carrier is necessary to surface to your customers, these instances could be:

Whatever your reason is for utilizing the Quote API, it will be available to you based on the product details your provide in your Quote Request (⚠️Note: Dangerous Goods not available for Quotes).

A Key factor in the API platform is to empower your infrastructure to perform a complete fulfilment experience that you require, Label API is a key performer in that regard. Label API will return to you A6 Sized PDF Shipping label documents, A4 PDF Pick Slips, can provide ZPL if required, A4 PDF Dangerous Goods & Commercial Invoice Documentation.

Once your order has been utilized by the Label API, the order is placed at a ready to be dispatched state. This is the final state that your order will transition to prior sending the booking to the carrier.

This API also confirms which carrier your order has been allocated to and provides Consignment / Article details that will be referenced by the carrier.

Book API is the final step before sending your order to the carrier (Priority Allocated Orders are an exception). As a rule for most carriers, you would only be sending this request once per day at the end of the order process. If you have larger volumes then we would recommend twice per day and have a morning and afternoon pickup.

In the response of the Book API is where you can retrieve an A4 Documents of the Manifest with all your orders, some carriers require this document to process your orders (Australia Post & Startrack). You will get 1 manifest per carrier service and you are able to push multiple orders from multiple carriers through 1 Book API call.

In some circumstances there is a requirement to utilize the dashboard to fulfil rather than using your own Platform. In this scenario you would still want to maximize as much details within the Order call and when it comes for your label and booking process, you will be utilizing the Shippit UI. This solution is ideal to minimize development time as a Phase 1 as you uplift other parts of your infrastructure to accommodate the other APIs.

💡Priority Booking service is also known as Same Day bookings)

Priority bookings are hyper express carrier service that aim to fulfil orders on the same day. As a generalization Priority booking services operate at a point to point delivery system, meaning that the drivers will arrive at your booking origin and deliver goods to the destination to the service level agreed time.

Priority Booking services tend to be quite restrictive on when they can deliver items on the same day.

⚠️To ensure that all bookings that are booked with this service are delivered on time carriers will set a time window on when the last booking can be made for that same day (e.g., Direct Couriers can facilitate booking for the same day from 7 am to 5 pm)

Due to the time constraints Priority Booking are accelerated in the Shippit workflow. Bookings are immediately booked with the carrier once an order for a priority service has been made

Integrating a priority service in your workflow is a challenging step as you need to take precautions to ensure that your store and dispatch warehouses are ready to receive delivery Drivers to pick up your goods once the booking has been sent through.

As a rule, you would want to only make Priority Service booking when you are sure you have the stock within your dispatching location. A good way to ensure this is having your IMS to ensure that everything can be fulfilled from one location. If not, then you would need to cancel the Booking ASAP as a driver has been scheduled in to pick up your goods

If you are not sure if all priority bookings can be fulfilled from your store then you may need to limit your
priority delivery options to stock that you are certain that your general store can fulfil, if a customer adds stock that your are not certain that the store will able to fulfil, then you will need to omit Priority Service as a quoting option.

Priority Services can be fulfilled from multiple distance Zones; however, the cost exponentially increases the further the distance of the order. You would want to ensure that your zones are being held to local distances from your dispatching location. Pricing will affect on how much Same Day zone coverage you would want to make available on your site, best practice is to review your Shippit carrier rate card with your Account Manager or ask your Shippit Sales representative on a pricing breakdown of our priority services.

The Shippit API allows you to designate delivery times if you want to provide your customers delivery time slots. You can designate the specific Date you would like your service to be delivered on and a time window if you wish to provide that option to your customers.

💡Details on our API and how it can incorporate these options can be found in this link: Shippit API documentation

As you develop your integration with Shippit, an important note is how you would want to receive feedback from Shippit. We primarily uses webhooks as a method to update your platform with tracking status updates and utilizes this method to provide Bulk Analytics reports.

The Webhook tracking method only initializes when an order has been booked with the carrier and starts its outbound tracking journey. The below flow is an example on a full API integration and utilizing Webhooks as a primary feedback method.

One of the strongest points about Shippit as a platform is the ability to allocate your orders to the best suited carriers. This allocation comes in two steps, Validation & Allocation.

Validation is Shippit reading the order that is flowing into your account, this will range from Address Suburb postcodes, your route (Origin & Destination), Type of goods you are sending (Dangerous or Not), and your Parcel Length x Width x Height and Weight. From there Shippit send carriers all these details to find which ones are willing to fulfil the order.

Allocation is Shippit reading your account settings to find which carrier you have enabled and what your account’s allocation preference is set to when choosing the carrier.

To maximize your utilization of Shippit, it is always preferred if you are able to provide as much packaging details your platform allows. However, the Shippit platform does provide basic carton allocation logic, if your platform does not contain the relevant information.

The packaging allocation is based on the weight which is part of the minimum requirement for Shippit to know your SKU. There are two kinds of weights in the distribution world:

The parcel allocation will require you to provide Shippit the greater value of the two and it will allocate to the appropriate parcel. You can add your custom Parcels Pre-sets in the Settings and have your SKUs to be allocated to their individual parcels