Reference Fields and Carrier Mappings

Pass additional information to carriers via data fields to be associated with a shipment.

About reference fields and carrier mappings

Many carriers provide the ability to pass additional information to them via data fields to be associated with a shipment. While these fields are not generally used as part of the shipping process, they can associate additional data with a given package for use in reporting or billing.

Shipium supports passing of these fields as reference identifier fields and then maps them across carriers so they're applied in as consistent a manner as possible across carriers during the carrier selection and label generation process.

Some carriers require that specific information requirements be met when retrieving a label for a shipment. Shipium also supports inclusion of this information and then maps it to the carrier's required fields.

This document includes mappings from Shipium's reference identifier fields to the named reference fields for available carriers. It also provides information about specific carrier-required data.

Related fields

Many of the available carriers support specific related reference fields:

  • purchaseOrderIdentifier . This Shipium field can be populated as part of the shipment entity and maps to purchase order ID.
  • costCenter . This Shipium field can be populated as part of the carrier account to categorize expenses and maps to the carrier's corresponding cost center field. If this field is not populated, then one of the reference identifier fields may be used, as outlined below.

Specific reference field mapping by carrier

The reference identifier fields that follow are part of the shipment entity, whether you're creating shipments directly or using the Carrier and Method Selection & Shipment Labels all-in-one mechanism.

DHL

Shipium Reference FieldCarrier Reference Field
referenceIdentifierpackageDescription
referenceIdentifier2billingReference1
referenceIdentifier3billingReference2
referenceIdentifier4(No mapping for DHL)
referenceIdentifier5(No mapping for DHL)

FedEx

Shipium Reference FieldCarrier Reference Field
referenceIdentifierCUSTOMER_REFERENCE
referenceIdentifier2P_O_NUMBER
referenceIdentifier3INVOICE_NUMBER
referenceIdentifier4DEPARTMENT_NUMBER
referenceIdentifier5SHIPMENT_INTEGRITY

UPS

Shipium Reference FieldCarrier Reference Field
referenceIdentifierReference 1
referenceIdentifier2Reference 2
referenceIdentifier3Reference 3
referenceIdentifier4Reference 4
referenceIdentifier5Reference 5

UPS Mail Innovations (UPS MI)

Shipium Reference FieldCarrier Reference Field
referenceIdentifierPackageID
referenceIdentifier2CostCenter

USPS

Shipium Reference FieldCarrier Reference Field
referenceIdentifierReferenceID
referenceIdentifier2ReferenceID2
referenceIdentifier3ReferenceID3
referenceIdentifier4ReferenceID4
referenceIdentifier5(No mapping for USPS)

Resources

Your Shipium team member is available to help along the way. However, you might find these resources helpful: