Electronic Bill of Lading (eBOL)

eBOL requests an electronic Bill of Lading — and, where applicable, a PRO tracking number — directly from the carrier once a shipment has been dispatched, rather than relying on a manually generated bill of lading.

How it works

Once a shipment is dispatched to a carrier that supports eBOL, request an eBOL for that dispatch. The carrier generates the document (and assigns a PRO number, if it uses one) and returns it once it's ready. Like the other operations, this happens asynchronously — request the eBOL, then check its status until the document is available.

Note

A small number of carriers assign the PRO number as part of dispatch itself, rather than through a separate eBOL request. For those carriers, the PRO number is already available once the shipment is dispatched.

Not every carrier supports eBOL — see Supported Carriers for which carriers offer it.

Who assigns the PRO number

Each carrier account has a PRO # Generation setting that determines where the PRO number comes from:

PRO # Generation setting on a carrier account, with checkboxes for allowing PRO assignment from the carrier and generating the PRO number from Shipwell

Generate PRO # from Shipwell — Shipwell assigns the PRO number itself when the shipment is dispatched. In this case, no eBOL request goes out to the carrier for a PRO number.
Allow PRO # assignment from carrier — the carrier assigns the PRO number. It's returned either in the eBOL response, or as part of a tracking update, depending on the carrier.

If both are unset, no PRO number is generated for that carrier account.

Endpoints

POST /ebol/ — request an eBOL for a dispatch.
GET /ebol/{ebol_request_id} — check the status of an eBOL request and retrieve the result.
GET /ebol/dispatch/{dispatch_request_id} — look up the eBOL for a given dispatch.

API reference

Coming soon.

Next steps

Continue tracking the shipment to delivery, and pull its delivery documents — such as the Proof of Delivery — once available.