What Are Source Shipping Methods?
Source shipping methods represent the different ways a source can physically ship an order out (i.e. specific carriers, methods, or service levels). Source shipping methods are often important during the integration process, as it allows you to denote specific shipping codes that a source may need in order to ship out in a specific way.
Some important elements for a source shipping method include:
- Shipping policy: represents the policy associated to this method (see Shipping Policies)
- Shipping code: represents a custom code your source needs to ship out a specific way
- Global carrier/method: represents an association to a Flxpoint carrier, which can be leveraged in things like rate shopping.
- Custom carrier: represents an additional custom field you can use to describe the carrier
- Custom method: represents an additional custom field you can use to describe the carrier service method or level
Example:
- A customer places an overnight shipping order and this flows into Flxpoint
- Flxpoint routes the order and generates a fulfillment request/fulfillment order(FR/FO) for one of your sources
- At this point, the source needs to know that this needs to be shipped out overnight
- If this source sends out via UPS, we could create a source shipping method such as "UPS Next Day Air" and associate this shipping method to an overnight shipping policy.
- In addition, if the source required a code such as "UPSNDA" to denote using UPS Next Day Air, a shipping code could be configured with "UPSNDA" to send to the source with the FR/FO.
To learn more about how source shipping methods interact with shipping policies and channel shipping mappings, see Shipping Policies.
Additionally, you can configure rate shopping for your source(s), which will allow you to shop between these two shipping methods and choose the cheapest one (optional).