What are orders?

Orders are part of the core of any supply chain and the modern Shipwell Orders API framework enables powerful capabilities for a seamless logistics journey. The Shipwell Orders API gives you the ability to:

Create and manage orders
Create one or more shipments for an order
Gain real-time order visibility
Optimize the creation of outbound shipments from orders
Gain efficiency with supplier access and collaboration
and more

Note

Shipwell Orders is the modern order framework that we build new functionality upon and the order framework that is documented in the orders section of the Shipwell Developer Portal. We continue to maintain the strong Orders (Legacy/v2) framework for existing customers that utilize this legacy framework, however functionality documented and described in this orders section does not pertain to Orders (Legacy/v2) .
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) for orders are located here .

Order and Shipment Concepts

The main concepts of the Shipwell Orders API are described below. Additional functionality that builds on the Order framework like Shipwell Supplier Portal and Shipwell Dock Scheduling utilize these same concepts and extend them.

Order

An order is the starting object for the transportation journey within Shipwell. It is the base object that captures information related to the transportation of goods or items.

Order Types

Generally, orders come in the following types:

Purchase Orders for inbound freight
Sales Orders for outbound freight
Transfer Orders for internal-to-internal freight

The modern orders framework is building specific differentiation for order types while Orders (Legacy/v2) you needed to leverage custom data to categorize the differences in freight order types while the overall order object itself was the same.

Order Structure

Orders contain certain core elements:

Order information (e.g. Order #, Purchase Order Number aka PO #, etc.)
Pickup and delivery information
Product line-item information
Customer specific custom data (reference, stop-level, and line-item custom data

Orders are meant to be lightweight extensible objects that efficiently let you provide information within Shipwell.

We will continue to develop and enhance orders with additional elements and capabilities like separate bill-to information, order documents, mixed pallet handling unit information, and order tags.

Tip

Order FAQs (Frequently Asked Questions) may be found here.

Shipment

Once an order is created then it can be placed on one or more shipments. A shipment is the movement of goods from an order from a ship-from to a ship-to location. A shipment within Shipwell contains a multitude of information around a shipment, including but not limited to reference information, order information, pickup and delivery information, tendering-related information, customer and carrier related information relative to the party booking or tendering the shipment, tracking information, and financial information of a shipment. There is the ability to leverage Custom Reference Data fields, Custom Customer Data fields, Custom Stop Data fields, Custom Line Item Data fields, and Custom Charge Line Item fields to enhance the information captured and stored on a shipment within Shipwell.

Transportation Release

A transportation release is the association or linking of an order to a shipment. When an order is placed on a shipment then it links this order to the shipment via a release. The release is an object that contains basic information about this order and shipment linkage.

Tip

Orders, Shipments, and other objects in the Shipwell platform may be enhanced with custom data key-value pairs of data (i.e. "your_custom_string_key": "any string value" ) and UI custom (data) fields to specify custom data entry UI fields that your users can or are required to enter.
- For example, both orders and shipments custom reference data (i.e. specify custom identifiers and reference data from your systems for an order), custom (transportation) stop-level data, custom order line item data fields, etc. to enhance the information captured and stored on that order or shipment object/record within Shipwell.
Learn more about custom_data here .

Technical prerequisites

To manage orders (purchase, sales, transfer, etc. orders) and shipments through the API, you must fulfill the following technical prerequisites:

Have access to the Sandbox or Production environments in Shipwell, including the ability to Authenticate into the sandbox or production environment with the appropriate environment specific account user-token .
Either a command-line interface with bash or a tool such as Postman .

Getting started

To get started with the modern Shipwell Orders API, follow this guide on How to Create an Order?.