Creating Consignments From Orders

  • v1
  • orders
  • pro
  • api
  • consignments

Packing orders into shippable consignments is the final step in the Orders process. This page explains how to create consignments from an order.

Using Pack Order

The Pack Order endpoint enables you to take those items on an order that share an origin and are to be shipped together, and generate a shippable consignment from them. You will need to send one Pack Order request per consignment that you want to create from the order.

To call Pack Order, send a POST request to https://api.electioapp.com/orders/{orderReference}/pack. At a minimum, the body of the request should contain the {orderReference} of the associated order and details of at least one {item} (and its accompanying {package}). The items and packages listed make up the consignment. If required, you can also populate the resulting consignment with a custom order reference and additional MetaData, CustomsDocumentation, and Tags.

Each item must be identified by a Reference, an ItemReferenceProvidedByCustomer, or a Sku. These fields are not mandatory in themselves, but one of them must be present for each item.

Note

PRO validates the items on a Pack Order request against its associated order. For example, the system will return an error if you make a Pack Order request including an item with a Sku of 12345 if there is no item with that Sku on the corresponding order.

However, PRO does not validate the items on a Pack Order request against previous Pack Order requests. The Pack Order endpoint can be called multiple times for the same order and items. This allows for split picks and short picks to back-order in an operation.

Once SortedPRO has received a Pack Order request, it creates the consignment and returns the relevant {consignmentReference}. The consignment's details are taken from the body of the Pack Order request. Fields that are not part of the request (because they are either NULL or not part of the Pack Order request structure) are populated from the details of the specified order.

Providing a Custom Order Reference

The Pack Order request's OrderReferenceProvidedByCustomer field enables you to provide a custom reference for the consignment that the request generates. This is a separate field to the OrderReferenceProvidedByCustomer used on the order itself, and behaves in the following ways:

  • If you add a custom reference to your Pack Order request, then PRO uses this value as the consignment's custom reference, even if there is a different custom reference on the order itself.
  • If you do not add a custom reference to your Pack Order request, but the order does have a custom reference, then PRO populates the resulting consignment's OrderReferenceProvidedByCustomer using the value from the order.
  • If neither the order or the Pack Order request has a custom reference specified, then PRO creates the consignment without a custom reference.

Generating Return Consignments

You can automatically generate a return consignment at the same time as well as an outbound consignment by using the GenerateReturn flag. When PRO receives a Pack Order request that has GenerateReturn set to true, it creates and returns two consignments - one outbound and one inbound.

The inbound consignment is identical to the outbound consignment, with the exception that its Origin and Destination addresses are swapped.

Pack Order Example

The example shows a Pack Order request to create a consignment with one package containing a single item from order EO-000-002-0TT. PRO creates the consignment and responds with a {consignmentReference} of EC-000-05B-MQ4.

POST https://api.electioapp.com/orders/EO-000-002-0TT/pack

{
  "OrderReference": "EO-000-002-0TT",
  "OrderReferenceProvidedByCustomer": "MyOrderRef001",
  "GenerateReturn": false,
  "Packages": [
    {
      "Dimensions": {
        "Unit": "Cm",
        "Width": 15.4,
        "Length": 21.7,
        "Height": 10.0
      },
      "Weight": {
        "Value": 1.3,
        "Unit": "Kg"
      },
      "PackageSizeReference": "",
      "Items": [
        {
          "Sku": "SKU093434",
          "Quantity": 1
        }
      ]
    }
  ],
  "MetaData": [
    {
      "KeyValue": "SampleKey",
      "StringValue": "SampleValue"
    }
  ]
}
Note
  • For full reference information on the Pack Order endpoint, see the Pack Order page of the API reference.
  • For an example call flow showing orders being packed into consignments, see the Order Flex call flow page.

Next Steps