Auto-Consolidation & The MachShip API

• Overview
• Understanding Auto-Consolidation
• How It Works
  • Workflow Steps
  • Matching Criteria
• Implementation Guide
  • API Integration
  • Reference Handling
  • Label Management
• Special Considerations
  • Routing Limitations
  • Selective Consolidation
• Best Practices

Overview

Auto-consolidation is a powerful MachShip feature that automatically combines newly created consignments with existing unmanifested consignments that share the same destination, carrier, and service. This guide explains how to effectively use this feature in your API integration.

Understanding Auto-Consolidation

Auto-consolidation operates at the point of consignment creation and is enabled on a per-carrier basis. The feature offers several key benefits:

1. Cost Reduction: By combining multiple shipments into a single consignment, auto-consolidation can significantly reduce freight costs.
2. Integration Simplification: Your ERP or WMS can create individual consignments without needing to manage the consolidation process, as MachShip handles this automatically.

How It Works

Workflow Steps

The auto-consolidation process follows these steps:

1. An unmanifested consignment is created with a unique consignment ID and barcodes. This becomes the "original consignment".
2. A new consignment is later created with the same warehouse, destination customer, carrier, and service.
3. Before allocating a new consignment ID and barcode, MachShip checks for existing unmanifested consignments with matching FROM and TO details, carrier, and service.
4. If a match is found:
   • The items from the new consignment are added to the matched (original) consignment
   • The consignment is re-priced on the same service to ensure it is valid
   • If valid, additional labels are generated for the new items on the original consignment
5. If no match is found, or the new item would break a service restriction, a new consignment ID and barcodes are allocated as usual.

Matching Criteria

For auto-consolidation to occur, the following criteria must be met:

1. Company ID: Consignments must be created under the same company ID:

   "companyId": "1111"

2. Matching Address Details: All FROM and TO details must match exactly:

   • Name
   • Address Line 1
   • Address Line 2
   • Location (suburb and postcode)

3. Matching Carrier Details: The following must be identical:

   • Carrier ID
   • Carrier Service ID
   • Carrier Account ID

4. Consignment Status: The existing consignment must be in an unmanifested state.

Implementation Guide

API Integration

When creating consignments via the MachShip API:

• No additional parameters are required to enable auto-consolidation
• The feature automatically applies based on the matching criteria
• The response from the create consignment endpoint may not immediately reflect the consolidated state
• You may need to retrieve the consignment details again after a short delay to see the updated item list and label information

Reference Handling

When consignments are consolidated, reference fields are concatenated with a comma separator:

• Original consignment reference: "REF001"
• New consignment reference: "REF002"
• Resulting consolidated reference: "REF001,REF002"

Label Management

Auto-consolidation affects the numbering on printed labels:

• If the original consignment had 3 labels (numbered 1 of 3, 2 of 3, 3 of 3)
• And 2 more items are added through auto-consolidation
• The new labels would be numbered 1 of 2 and 2 of 2

Special Considerations

Routing Limitations

Auto-consolidation is not compatible with least cost routing. You must pre-allocate the carrier, service, and account when creating the consignment for auto-consolidation to work.

Selective Consolidation

If you need to enable auto-consolidation for some consignments but not others:

• Ensure that the required fields do not match for consignments you want to keep separate
• Consider adding a unique identifier to the contact name for consignments that should not be consolidated
• If using the createConsignmentsWithComplexItems endpoint, set disableAutoConsolidation to true.

Best Practices

1. Testing: Thoroughly test your implementation to ensure consignments are being consolidated as expected.

2. System Updates: Ensure your systems can handle multiple shipments with the same carrier consignment id

3. Monitoring: Regularly verify that consolidations are occurring as intended

4. Error Handling: Be prepared to handle cases where consolidation cannot occur due to service restrictions