Guide to Shipment Connector functionality

Shipment Settings

Shipment Settings is the page of which all of our settings, options and additional information is kept. This is also where you connect with the given Multi-Carrier Platform. From here you can setup your Sender Address information, Shipment Measurements, confirmation types and more.

To see how you connect to the individual Shipment Connectors please see their individual pages here:

• Shipmondo
• nShift Ship
• nShift Webshipper
• nShift Transsmart

Shipment Sender information

On the Shipment Settings Page you can set what your Ship-from address information should be. You have the choice of using the default address fields from Company information, the Shipping fields, create a completely custom address to be used or use your locations addresses which allows you to ship from multiple warehouses in the same environment.

Receiver & billing information

We utilise as much as standard Business Central as possible and for receiver (and billing) information this is no different.

Default (Sell-to Address)

Your receiver information will always correnspond to your ship-to fields in Business Central, by default this is always set to be equal to your sell-to information on a Sales Order.

Alternate Shipping Address

If you select an Alternate Shipping Address all of the fields from Alternate Shipping Address Card will be utilised this includes Phone no. - E-mail & even choice of Shipping Agent & Shipping Agent service.

Custom Address

If you select a Custom Receiver Address these fields will be used for receiver information except e-mail as there is no standard Business Central field for this when using a Custom Address - so therefore we are forced to use the Sales header email (sell-to) - We have requested for Microsoft to add this since they added the Ship-to Phone no. field, however, they did not believe it necessary. If you or your Business Central Partner want to add a custom field for this we have an EventSubscribers you can use to easily adjust our integrations to use your custom field.

Shipment Measurements

You can select between different metrics such as grams for weight, Meter & millimeter for dimensions allowing for greater flexibility, this will also update the tooltips on your waybill lines (this requires a refresh of the browser to take effect after changing it) The dimensions can be changed on the shipment settings page under the shipment measurements segment.

Waybills & Shipments

Each of the Shipment Connectors utilises a Waybill to store the information that is forwarded to the Shipping Agent/Carrier. The relationship between Waybills and orders are 1 to 1. For each order one waybill is created. The only exception is for documents that existed prior to the installation of the Shipment Connector - For these pre-existing documents users will have to manually create a Waybill which can be done by opening the given document and navigating to the following Actions > Shipment > New Waybill.

It is also on the Waybill that the parcel information which is forwarded to the shipping agent is entered. The Waybill consists of a Shipping Agent/Carrier, an associated Shipping Agent Service, order reference no. and optionally a pick-up point ID, and receiver description.

We also have two sections for Pick-up information and Ship-to information where you can enter when you want you shipments to be picked up and at which time as well, along with when the desired delivery time and date of the shipment. If you are Shipping from Sales Orders then you can use the standard Business Central fields Requested and promised Delivery (Primised Delivery Date > Requested Delivery Date) date to assign a delivery date for the shipment.

For warehouse shipments we have added a field called delivery date under the Shipment section where you can change the delivery date.

By default we aim to utilise as much as Standard Business Central as possible so if you have setup a standard shipping agent and shipping agent service on your Customers In Business Central these fields are filled out in the Waybill Header automatically - it is essential that a shipping agent and a shipping agent service is specified and set up properly on the waybill that is being handled otherwise it is not possible to forward the relevant information to the Multi-carrier platform and thereby the carrier itself.

Posting The Waybill

The most essential function in the Shipment Connectors is transferring Shipment Data to the multi-carrier Platform, through to the given carrier thereby booking the shipment and printing the requested labels. While there is not inherently intended a specific process for when to use the Waybill as it is flexible and can be used both pre-posting and after posting of documents, and is therefore likely to cover the majority of different business’ and their various process along with that - We do envision the Waybill as the finalising part of the picking process once picking is completed for an order.

Once the pick has been completed, you have selected your given Shipping Agent & shipping agent service you can enter the amount of packages/pallets/colli you are shipping on the Waybill Header section and and enter the package type, weight and dimensions. Once this data has been entered you can navigate to Actions > Shipment > Post Waybill or via the shortcutkey Alt + P. This will then transfer the data from Business Central to the Multi-carrier platform and the requested labels will be printed to the designated printer immediately.

You can tell a Waybill Line has been posted by its status which changes from Open to Reserved.

Printer setup

Printers can be designated in a couple of ways.

1. You can setup a printer under Shipment Settings which will then be used by everyone posting a waybill
2. However, if you would like to control it on an individual level we have added a shipment printer field on the user settings page from which you can designate a printer to a specific user. This will always be prioritised over the printer specified under shipment settings.

To see more information about downloading printers into Business Central you will have to check out the individual setup pages for the given Multi-Carrier platform that you are working with - see links below for more.

• Shipmondo Connector
• nShift Ship Connector
• nShift Transsmart Connector
• nShift Webshipper Connector

Shipping Agent & Shipping Service Setup

When you have downloaded your Shipping Agent & Shipping Agent Service data into Business Central they will be given an ID in the Code field which is standard to Business Central, this field can always be changed without fear of breaking the connection between BC data and Multi-Carrier platform. The same goes for the code of the Shipping Agent Service

An example of this could be that when downloaded from Multi-Carrier Platform into Business Central a carrier such as Danske Fragtmænd may get a Code of 10. However, we can change this as we see fit for instance into DF - Remember the Code field only holds 10 characters.

Before:

After:

Addons, Additional services, Tracking mail & Notifications Setup

Every Shipping Agent have various supplementary services associated to them. It is possible to assign optional services to a Shipping Agent Service.

The options available differ from Shipping Agent to Shipping Agent but also from Shipping Agent Service to Shipping Agent Service. However, SMS and E-mail notifications are universally available. It is possible to select multiple addons, services and notification types.

An example of an optional service is e-mail Notification where the receiver of the shipment will receive an e mail notification containing the status of their parcel.

Package types Setup

Every Shipping Agent Service has one or more related Package Types. The package types can be copied to allow for different variations of say a Whole pallet - it also has a description which may be changed - additionally, it is possible to adjust the dimensions of the package in the given metric correlating with your setup in Shipment measurements

The description of the package, as well as the dimensions are automatically inserted onto the waybill lines when the package type is selected. It is also possible to define Pallet Exchange and select a package type as the default package type for the Shipping Agent Service - this in turn will insert the package type automatically when the Shipping Agent Service is selected.

In order to access the overview for a given Shipping Agent’s package types you have to navigate onto the given Shipping Agent and afterwards select a Shipping Agent service on the line and then access the following in the ribbon under Additional Services (click the downwards pointing arrow) Additional Services > Package Types.

Customs

For Shipments outbound for non-EU countries you are required to accompany the shipment with the appropriate Customs data. This can easily be handled with our Customs handling system.

Setup for Customs

Firstly you should ensure that your items have the correct and valid data such as Country of Origin & Tariff Codes both of which are standard Business Central fields on the item card.

Besides Country of Origin & Tariff Codes from the item card the customs system will take the necessary information from the sales order lines, this includes Currency Code, Quantity, SKU (Item no.), unit weight, unit price (includes any discount on the lines)

Secondly, the shipping agent service will have a field called customs type where you have to select a type from the enum list. It depends on the carrier but usually this would be the unit value that you select, in rare instances it is the total value, ensure to contact the Multi-Carrier platform or the carriers themselves to ask what they prefer if in doubt.

When you have completed your pick, filled out Waybill & Waybill lines then select the customs button in the ribbon above the Waybill lines

This will open a new page which holds your Customs data for the given order. To automatically create the customs information use the Create Customs lines button at the top of the page.

Once that is done you can check your data to see if anything is missing, however, if everything is in order you can simply exit this page and your shipment will now be accompanied by the proper customs information and based on this the Multi-Carrier platform will then automatically create a Proforma Invoice (also referred to as Paperless Invoicing) and sent to the carrier - Removing the now redundant necessity to manually create an invoice and sent to the carrier.

Track & trace

On the Track & Trace page in Business Central you can find all relevant information about your outgoing Shipments, including tracking numbers, order numbers, Receiver information and so forth. You can also use the track package function to directly transfer you to the carriers tracking page with the given tracking number of the selected line - enabling instantaneous access to the status of the shipment. You can also reprint shipping labels that are either missing or have become invalid.

If you enable fact boxes on this page you will see a more detailed account of the given shipment selected.

Setting up the tracking url for the Track package function

On the Shipping Agent page you can add a tracking url to the shipping agent. This tracking url varies depending on the individual tracking pages and urls the carriers use. Therefore it is necessary to search for this for the given carrier being utilised. To give an example let us try and set up the tracking url for GLS. Start by opening your preferred browser and search for something along the lines of GLS tracking. When you have found their tracking page, try typing something into their search field such as “123” this is simply to trigger an update of the pages url. If it does update the url to something that ends with “?match=123” it has been done correct, if not you can also just add “?match=123” at the end of the url and it should update the page as well. You can then replace the fictive tracking number “123” with %1 and you now have the tracking url used for GLS packages.

GLS tracking link: https://gls-group.com/DK/en/parcel-tracking?match=%1

Additional commonly known tracking urls

• Danske Fragtmænd: https://trace.fragt.dk/#/trackTrace/%1
• PostNord: https://www.postnord.dk/en/tools/track-and-trace?shipmentId=%1
• UPS: https://www.ups.com/track?loc=en_DK&requester=QUIC&tracknum=%1/
• FedEx: https://www.fedex.com/fedextrack/no-results-found?trknbr=%1
• TNT: https://www.tnt.com/express/da_dk/site/shipping-tools/tracking.html?searchType=con&cons=%1
• Freja: https://www.freja.com/tracking/?%1
• Blue Water Shipping: https://www.tracking-status.com/blue-water-shipping-tracking-page/?tn=%1
• DB Schenker: https://www.dbschenker.com/app/tracking-public/?refNumber=%1&language_region=en-US_US
• Schou Danielsen logistik: https://t.alicetms.dk/#/SDL/TrackAndTrace/%1

Use Shipping Agent Reference/Waybill no for tracking

Some Shipping Agents such as Danske Fragtmænd do not use the individual tracking no’s to track packages they use a Waybill no. or something akin to it to track shipments. Therefore we have a functionality on the shipping agent that can be activated that uses the Waybill no. instead - this does require that it is returned to us from the Shipping agent/Multi-carrier platform.

If in doubt you should ask your Shipping Agent or the multi-carrier platform whether that specific shipping agent uses a Waybill no. to track or the individual tracking no. to track with.

Auto-Post Shipments (When Posting Document in BC)

On the setup page Shipment Settings you can enable a function called Auto-Post Shipments. This feature will automatically sent all open Waybill lines when posting a document. This enables users to use Business Centrals standard posting algorithm - This can save an additional click and allow for Business Central to handle the printing of the parcel slip (Posted Sales Shipment) and the freight label at the same time.

Confirmation Types

You can select between three Confirmation types:

1. Direct Print
2. Confirm Shipment
3. Confirm Package

Direct Print

When this is select shipments will be sent directly, without confirmation - utilise this if you are sure of your process and do not want the added step of confirming data for your shipments.

Confirm Shipment

Before the Shipment and its packages are posted and sent to the Carrier via the Multi-Carrier platform users will be prompted to confirm the data of the entire shipment, users have the possiblity of changing the printer if they desire.

Confirm Packages

Before the Shipment and its packages are posted and sent to the Carrier via the Multi-Carrier platform users will be prompted to confirm the data of each package of the shipment. Here it is possible to make additions to the Waybill lines, you can add or delete waybill lines or change existing waybill lines such as their weight & dimensions or package type, as well as the printer used for labels.

Shipment Quote Setup

At the bottom of the Shipment Settings page there is a setup for the Shipping price.

In the setup it is possible to change the shipping price of a specific item, G/L account et cetera. You can adjust four parameters:

1. Type: Refers to the type which is affected by the setup e.g. Item or G/L account.
2. Number: Refers to e.g. the item or type of G/L account affected by the setup.
3. Factor: Refers to how much is added or subtracted of the shipping price for the given type and number.
4. Rounding Method: In this field it possible to define Rounding Methods.

IMPORTANT: Ensure to contact the given Multi-Carrier platform you are working with and ensure that the carriers support this setup.

Dangerous Goods

You can also use Dangerous Goods with all of the Shipment Connector (excluding Webshipper) More information about Dangerous goods can be found at Get started with Dangerous Goods