About shipment planning

Your organization may wish to better control your customer delivery experience to explicitly express your tolerance for how early or how late a shipment can deliver. Depending on your product, an early delivery time may be detrimental to your business model or otherwise undesirable.

The Shipment Planning API allows you to specify constraints for your customer deliveries for how early or late a shipment can be delivered. Using your configuration preferences, the API provides a recommended ship-by date to meet your desired delivery date.

Set up shipment planning for your organization

To start using Shipment Planning, you’ll need to complete the following steps. Your dedicated Shipium Implementation team member will assist you with each one.

Set up your Shipium account.
You’ll set up your organization’s account within the Shipium platform.
Configure your fulfillment network.
All warehouse or store origins and origin schedules are set up on the Shipium platform and configured to your organization's exact network properties. You'll also configure the expected number of days to ship from your network origins. You can find guidance in the Fulfillment Contexts and Origins documentation.
Configure your time in transit (TNT) calculation hierarchy.
Work with your Shipium contact to determine what hierarchy you want to use for TNTs, between Shipium calculated, your company's preferred overrides (if any), and defaults from the carrier. You can read more about TNT estimations here: Time in Transit Estimations.
Upload shipment data.
TNTs are needed for the most accurate estimated delivery date, or EDD. You'll set up your preferred TNT structure and upload your organization’s historical shipment values. Shipium requests that you upload 12 months of data. Your Shipium contact will provide the format for this initial file upload and walk you through the process.

Use the Shipment Planning API

Use cases and sample calls and responses are outlined in the Shipment Planning API documentation:

Basic shipment planning using ship option
Basic shipment planning with a ship option with a ship date exception response
Basic shipment planning using a carrier service method allow list. What is the date and time I need to ship a parcel from my fulfillment center, using a specified carrier method, to ensure delivery by the desired date?
Shipment planning with minimal requirements

Resources

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