Carrier and Method Selection
About Carrier and Method Selection
Shipium's Carrier and Method Selection service determines the least expensive carrier and ship method that meets a set of rules you define for any given shipment.
Pre-requisite for using APIs
Before starting to use the APIs for carrier and method selection, your organization must set up one or more carriers and associated shipment methods. You can find details about setup for your organization in Carrier Selection Configuration.
There are several applications to set up new shipping carriers or ship methods, manage rate changes, temporarily disable certain carrier methods, configure label preferences, and other useful functionality. Information about setup is included in Carrier Selection Configuration. To establish preferred label settings, you can refer to the Label Configuration documentation, which provides guidance for setting up label preferences, and to the Label Customization documentation for any desired label augmentations in the Shipium Console.
This guide provides the use cases, with links to technical documentation, for the Carrier and Method Selection API. To use the API, you'll first need to set up Carrier Selection for your organization's account. Guidance for doing so is included in the next section. You can read more about Carrier Selection on our website. For a list of the carriers in our network, see Supported Carriers.
Set up Carrier and Method Selection for your organization
To start using Carrier Selection, you'll need to complete the following steps. Your dedicated Shipium Implementation team member will assist you with each one.
Set up your Shipium account. You’ll set up your organization’s account within the Shipium platform.
Configure your fulfillment network. All carriers and carrier contracts, rate sheets, warehouse or store origins, and origin schedules are set up on the Shipium platform as fulfillment contexts and configured to your organization's exact network properties.
Use the Carrier and Method Selection service
When selecting a carrier and service method for a shipment, Shipium recommends using the Carrier and Method Selection & Shipment Label API, whether or not you want to retrieve a shipping label. However, you also may choose to call the Carrier and Method Selection API, which does not generate a label, for this same use case. For label generation without carrier selection, you can use the Shipment Label API. To learn more about these options, visit Carrier and Method Selection & Shipment Labels.
Use cases and sample calls are outlined in the Carrier and Method Selection API documentation:
Additional options for carrier selection (and shipment labels)
Some cases require additional consideration, such as designating a desired delivery date or specifying a shipment as containing hazardous materials. These use cases are described below.
Shipment timing
- Ship options. Specify a particular class of shipment, such as "NextDay", or determine when specific carriers and their service methods are considered for a given shipment.
- Desired, exact, and guaranteed delivery dates. Designate a desired, exact, or guaranteed delivery date in your API call.
- Business days of transit. Include a business days of transit value, which indicates operational days for your fulfillment center, in your API call.
Carrier considerations
- Specific carrier service method. Limit the set of carrier methods available when choosing a carrier and method.
- Carrier failover. Allow failover when there is an issue calling a carrier.
- Shipment manifesting. Perform scheduled or manual manifesting.
- Customs info. Provide additional customs details about your package.
- Multi-parcel shipments. Ship a product in multiple packages for a shipment.
- Special processing properties. Designate special handling for a shipment, such as requiring a delivery signature.
- Reference fields and carrier mappings. Pass additional information to the carrier via data fields to be associated with a shipment.
- Evaluated service methods. Review carriers and service methods that were evaluated but not selected for a shipment.
Configured shipment settings
- Fulfillment contexts. Establish your organization's operations fulfillment network within the Shipium platform. Context configuration includes Origins, Carrier Contracts, Label Configuration, Third Party Billing, Injection, and Shipment Lanes.
- Tenants. If your organization employs tenants, you’ll configure them as part of your fulfillment contexts.
- Carrier selection rules. Configure delivery zone rules to specify a set of one or more carriers to cover a delivery zone as well as establish package and tag criteria for those deliveries.
- Schedule and shipment limits. Set limits on the amount of shipments processed at a certain fulfillment center, the number of shipments a certain carrier will process or the number of shipments processed by selected service methods, or the costs of shipping.
- Shipment labels. Configure label settings, use label test mode, and generate labels for shipments.
Shipments and packaging
- Address validation. Validate addresses before shipment and label generation.
- Non-U.S. addresses. Ensure you have properly formatted addresses when shipping to non-U.S. destinations.
- Package planning. Select optimal packaging for your shipments.
- Shipment contents. Designate a package as bound printed matter, hazardous material, hundredweight, or perishable.
Carrier fees and billing
- Third party billing. Configure your organization's account to bill another account, or third party, for the cost of shipping a package.
- Carrier surcharges. Configure carrier surcharges for your organization's account.
- Labels without costing. Generate shipping labels without having to provide costing information like carrier service method rates.
FAQ
Q: How long is shipment data stored in the Shipium Console?
A: 100 days
Resources
Your Shipium team member is available to help along the way. However, you might find these resources helpful:
Updated 25 days ago