Shipper Integration | Royal Mail V3

Shipper Integration | Royal Mail V3

Introduction & Prerequisites

Kornit X has created a shipper integration to allow fulfillers to generate Royal Mail shipping labels using the Royal Mail V3 REST API. Once all items in an order have been scanned at the dispatch scan point, a final scan of any item in the order will create a shipment in Royal Mail and return a Royal Mail shipping label. To use this integration, you must already have an account with Royal Mail. This integration also has the ability to generate customs declaration and manifest documents. 
If you do not have a account with Royal Mail you must download and complete the following Pro Shipping Onboarding Form and return it to the Kornit X Team. Once received we will forward this on to our contacts at Royal Mail and they will contact you via email within a few days to let you know the account is set up and ready. Within that email they will be ask you to click on the 'Verify Your Account' and set up a password. You should log into the RM Pro shipping account to access the Username, Password and Posting Location required to enable the integration.

Setup Within Platform

If you have a Royal Mail account all you need to do is head to your dropship company and within the Shipper Integration window select the "Royal Mail (REST] V3" option shown below.

Once you click the option you need to add your Username, Password, Client ID, Client Password and Posting Location while ensuring the "Is Enabled" toggle is enabled like the below screenshot shows.


The format of the Username is going to include 10 numerical digits followed by API within the following format - xxxxxxxxxxAPI"
Please note the "Posting Location" is likely to be a 10 digit number that will be sent from Royal Mail direct. 

Features Of This Integration

You can also set multiple options that you can enable once you have connected with Royal Mail and these are the following include the following. Please note that not all of the below features need to be enabled or filled in, these options are available to give users the best service. The features are listed in the way they are within the Platform. 
  1. "Enabled" toggle - When the shipper integration has been turned on this toggle will be set to on. To disable the integration simply slide this to off. 
  2. "Secondary Orders" toggle - This option should be enabled if your orders have both a primary and secondary company set on them.  In most cases, this option will need to be enabled unless you are advised otherwise by Kornit X staff. 
  3. "Start Timestamp" textbox - The start date/time of the integration.  Only orders created after this date/time will have a shipment created against them when the Ahead of Time option is enabled.
  4. "Dropship Delegation" toggle- Dropship delegates allow an integration to be set up once on a single dropship company and the integration settings apply to all dropships that are linked to that fulfiller.  A dropship delegate can be set on any fulfiller company.  If this is a feature you want to use, enable this option on the RM integration settings of the dropship delegate that's set on the fulfiller company.
  5. "Ahead of time" enabled toggle - With this toggle enabled, the system will attempt to create a shipment against the order, making the call to the carrier, shortly after order creation. Once enabled there will be an option to add a start time stamp (UTC) which will mean that the integration will only try to ship orders that were created after this time.
  6. "Wait Until Required Dispatch Date" toggle - Set by default only, when ahead of time is enabled orders that have required dispatch date will not have a shipment created until dispatch date reached
  7. "Shipment Strategy" dropdown - A shipment strategy can also be selected from the Shipment Strategy drop down. If nothing is selected, the default Combined Strategy is used. Please note if not using standard there are 4 different options including "Manual Override". "Individual Parcels", "Combined Parcels" and "Bundled Parcels".
Please note that the different options will generate the following - Manual is used when a bespoke strategy has been created by our dev team, Individual will be per shipping line item, Combined will make one shipping label for an entire order and bundled will Find out what this does.
  1. "Dimensions Strategy" textbox - The dimensions strategy field can be left blank to use the default dimensions. If the customer requires specific shipment dimensions, please obtain the dimensions for their shipments and contact the support team to configure this.Please note for a
  2. "SKU Character Limit" textbox - Royal Mail have a limit on SKU at 30 so this is needed - if exceed that you'll need to set to 30 max. With this textbox here you can set a number to limit the length of each SKU. This is useful if for the shipping labels you need to limit the length to 10 characters. Not setting this will just use the full SKU of say 20 characters that some products may use. 
  3. "Shipping Service Strategy" Dropdown/Textbox - This is not required and is only used when the Standard options below do not fulfil the client needs, where this is the case a custom strategy can be made at an additional development cost. Users with one will not see dropdown only the path 
  4. "Pre Registration Type" dropdown - This dropdown offers the options for Import One Stop Shop (IOSS) and Economic Operators Registration and Identification number (EORI) which need to be selected depending on whether or not the customer isn't payinf for tax on their orders. If this is not set the end user would have to pay for the tax. 
  5. "Pre Registration Number" textbox - This number will need to be set if the customer is not paying for the tax as linked in the type dropdown. If this is missing the assumption is that the user must pay for tax when the item is received. 
A full list of Royal Mail carrier and service codes can be found on the Excel document attached to this article.  

Dimensions Strategy Breakdown

Relating to the Dimensions Strategy, the Royal Mail v3 integration offers improved dimension calculations in an aim to ensure the dimensions used in orders are improved. There are 3 dimension services that can be set on the Royal mail V3 shipping integration which are listed below. 
  1. Standard Dimensions strategy
  2. Standard Weight And Dimensions strategy
  3. Standard Weight strategy (which now has the right weight settings specified by Royal Mail)
Dimensions are now getting included within the API request as long as the product has been provided with these settings.

Service Strategy Breakdown

A service strategy named 'Standard Weight' is available.  The strategy uses the same services as the 'Standard' service strategy and determines the format of the service (Letter, Large Letter or Parcel) based on the combined weight of the order.  The weight breaks are listed below.
  1. Weight under 25g is for Letter.
  2. Weight between 25g and 600g is for Large Letter.
  3. Weight greater than 600g for Parcel.
When using the shipping mapping rules on the system with weight ranges, the 'Standard' service strategy should be used to avoid conflict with the weight ranges in the Standard Weight service strategy.
      

Label Settings

There are settings that need to be enabled for labels and these have been documented below.
  1. "Include Contact Telephone" toggle - With this toggle enabled the contact telephone number will include being printed on the shipping label, meaning for every customer who leaves a telephone number when ordering will receive this on their package. 
  2. "Include Contact Email" toggle - Same as the telephone, with this enabled the email that the customer used when placing their order will be included on the shipping label of all orders. 
  3. "Enable Forced Tracking" toggle - Enabled by default this will ensure that for any untracked orders you will return a number that can be used to track within the status callback. 
  4. "Company Name" textbox - Filling in this textbox will include your company name on the shipping labels. 
  5. "Contact Name" textbox - This textbox can include a contact name from your company that will be included on all shipping labels, this could for example be a generic customer service contact.
  6. "Address" textboxes - Finally, the shipping label can include the return address of your company including Address Line 1-3, Town, County, Country Code and Postcode. Please note including this will ensure every shipping label generated will include the return address.  
These are all set within the integration setup window but these are required to ensure all printed labels include the correct data you require. 

Generating a shipping label from Platform

Once the Royal Mail V3 shipping integration has been configured, you can generate Royal Mail shipping label PDF from within the Platform by taking the following steps.

From within Platform, go to Sales > Order Manager  and locate the order you wish to create a shipping label for. When you have found the order you wish to ship, click on the whole order as shown below. 

After clicking on the order, you will see the Items listed and within these items you will find the Item ID which you need to copy for the next step as shown below. 

Finally, once the item ID has been copied, you need to head to Floor > Shipping Station and scan the barcode on the orders jobsheet or paste the Item ID  in the Dispatch Item box to generate the shipping label PDF for the order. 

Once the shipping label has been printed the order can be shipped. 

Royal Mail Shipping Method & Service Codes

There are multiple different Carriers and Service Codes that can be used with Royal Mail. A full list of Royal Mail carrier and service codes can be found on the Excel document attached to this article. Below are some examples of common carrier and service codes used with this integration. Please note the carrier for ALL of the below is "Royal Mail". The Shipping Carrier on the order must be set to Royal Mail to correctly trigger the Royal Mail integration. 
Method
Service Code
Format CodeTracking Notification
Local Collect
Safe Place
Consequential Loss
Recorded Signed For
Saturday Guaranteed
Standard Untracked 24 letter
CRL1
L
✔
✔
✔
✔
✔
✔
Standard Untracked 24 large letter
CRL1
F
✔
✔
✔
✔
✔
✔
Standard untracked 24
CRL1
P
✔
✔
✔
✔
✔
✔
Standard untracked 48 letter
CRL2
L
✔
✔
✔
✔
✔
✔
Standard untracked 48 large letter
CRL2
F
✔
✔
✔
✔
✔
✔
Standard untracked 48
CRL2
P
✔
✔
✔
✔
✔
✔
First class letter
STL1
L
✔
✔
✔
✔
✔
✔
First class large letter
STL1
F
✔
✔
✔
✔
✔
✔
First class
STL1
P
✔
✔
✔
✔
✔
✔
Tracked 24 letter
TPMN
L
✔

✔
✔
✔
✔
Tracked 24 large letter
TPMN
F
✔

✔
✔
✔
✔
Tracked 24
TPMN
P
✔

✔
✔
✔
✔
Please note that with any methods like "Tracked 24" or "Untracked 24" this assumes that a parcel is being sent, this is why letter and large letter sections are both different. 

Required Product and Company Setup

The products that are going to be sold as orders through the integration must include a weight in grams and an RRP price with a quantity of 1 must be set.  The weight can be set within the Ecommerce Data fields of a product as shown here. 

As for the RRP price this can be added within the E-commerce the same as weight but within the Pricing tab shown below. 

You can define the currency per each product price but this is easier to set on the companies Basic Details. 

Manifesting In Order Manager

Royal Mail manifesting should be produced when all orders for the day have been sent, this must be completed as an end of the day process which must be printed off and handed over with your mail. Failing  to handover manifest paperwork with items can lead to additional charges being raised against your Royal Mail account and mail being delayed.
For more information on how manifesting work please refer to the following Royal Mail written documentation - Click Here
To access manifesting within Order Manager the orders first must have Royal Mail set as the carrier and you must filter to those orders from the day by setting the date to and from to the date. This is done by clicking the "See More" advanced filters as shown below and setting the date. On top of the date, you can filter the search to only show your orders carried by Royal Mail. 

Now the orders are visible you can select the orders and click the "Manifest Shipment" button. This option is only visible on the interface when looking at orders carried by Royal Mail. 

Once clicked you will see a warning for "Really manifest pending shipments?" and once confirmed the manifesting PDF will be generated and you will be able to print it. An example of a manifesting document can be seen below. 

Please note that once shipments have been manifested there is no way to undo the action.
 

Shipping Label Examples

Below is an example of the kind of shipping label the system will generate for Royal Mail V3.


FAQs

We are Kornit X offer support when setting this integration, the below are some common issues we wanted to highlight below. 

My shipping_country is not being set?
The "shipping_country must use a 2-letter ISO code and this not being set is likely the cause. A full list of 2-letter ISO codes can be found linked here. 

My products are not passing within orders?
This will likely be down to missing weight information against your products. To check this open the product and go to the "Ecommerce & Data" section of the product and ensure within the data that the "weight" field has been filled in. Without this being set the products will not pass correctly.

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