The supporting configuration behind shipments. Set up once, changed rarely, and worth getting right — most of it appears in dropdowns operators use dozens of times a day.
Shipment types
Shipments → Shipment types defines the classes of movement your business handles, beyond the built-in FCL / LCL / Air distinction. A shipment type carries the naming and behaviour for a class of traffic.
Keep the list as short as the business genuinely needs. Every extra type is another choice at the moment of creation, and a wrong choice there shapes the whole record.
Packaging
Shipments → Packaging defines the package types available on cargo lines — carton, pallet, crate, drum, bale.
Two rules keep this list useful:
- One entry per real thing. Pallet, pallets and PLT are three entries and three sets of statistics for one object.
- Match what your customers write on their packing lists. The point is that an operator can find the right one quickly.
Shipment roles
Shipment roles define the parts people play on a shipment — general operator, trucking operator, clearance operator and the rest. They determine who is responsible for what within a job.
These are distinct from the system-wide roles that grant permissions (Building roles). A shipment role says what someone does on this job; a system role says what they are allowed to do at all. A person usually needs both.
Subscription groups
Subscription groups control who is notified about what. Grouping recipients means a notification goes to a defined set rather than to whoever the sender remembered.
Review them when people change jobs. A subscription group still pointing at someone who left is the commonest cause of "nobody told us".
Shipment customers
Shipments → Customers holds customer party records used on shipments: name, address, city, state, postal code, email, phone, VAT ID and ISO code.
These are the addresses that appear as shipper, consignee and notifier on documents. That makes them different in purpose from CRM companies, which are the commercial relationship — see Companies. A CRM company is who you invoice; a shipment customer is who is printed on the bill of lading.
Keep them accurate to the letter. Party details on a bill of lading are read by carriers and customs authorities, and a wrong postal code or a missing VAT ID is rejected rather than interpreted.
Order of setup
If you are configuring from scratch, this order avoids rework:
- Packaging and shipment types — no dependencies.
- Shipment roles — needed before operators can be assigned.
- Workflows and their steps — see Workflows.
- Forms in the form builder — see The form builder.
- Transitions, which tie steps, forms, operators and post-actions together — see Running a transition.
- Subscription groups, once you know which notifications the post-actions send.
Last updated 15 September 2026