Overview of the Shiptheory app
Shiptheory connects your business directly to your carriers, allowing the app to send goods out notes to your integrated carriers for you. Through use of flexible shipping rules, you can even do this automatically!
Once the items have been shipped by your carrier, Shiptheory can update Brightpearl to mark the goods out notes as shipped in Brightpearl, reducing time spent on manual processes.
Getting started with Shiptheory
First, you will need to install the Shiptheory App via the App Store on the top right-hand side of the page. Find the Shiptheory app, then click "Turn on".
You will be taken to the getting started with/login screen for Shiptheory.
Signing up for Shiptheory
You will need to sign up for a Shiptheory account if you haven't got one already by clicking Register for free on the Shiptheory website. Click "Free trial" on the top right-hand side of the page.
This will ask you to create some login details for Shiptheory:
Connection and configuration
In order to connect Shiptheory and Brightpearl, you will need to Enable the Brightpearl channel upon setup.
Once you’ve enabled Brightpearl, you will then need to enter your Brightpearl account details and test your connection to Brightpearl:
You can then set up Shiptheory to work with the goods out note workflows you have, as below.
First, you will need to choose your preferences. There are three preferences to choose from:
| Product weight units |
Choose the unit of measure used for the weight of your Brightpearl products, from:
|
| Product size units |
Choose the unit of measure used for the size of your Brightpearl products, from:
|
| Shipping charges nominal code | Tell Shiptheory what your Brightpearl account code for shipping income on sales is, so Shiptheory is able to identify your shipping charges and separate them from your order contents value. |
You can then decide when Shiptheory should send a goods out note to a carrier, which can happen at the following stages:
- Created
- Printed
- Picked
- Packed
Please note that you can only choose one option.
If you try to choose more than one option, you will be faced with an error:
Advanced settings
There are also some further options you can configure, which can be accessed by clicking on the "Advanced settings" tab at the bottom of the page:
Mark as shipped when complete?
The first of these advanced settings is to decide whether Shiptheory should mark your Brightpearl goods out notes as shipped when the shipment is completed in Shiptheory.
Warning: Shipping in Brightpearl cannot be undone, so be cautious when enabling this option. It will not be suitable for every workflow.
Weights
The next two settings relate to weights.
Specify weight conditions allows you to specify either:
- a minimum weight that will be applied to all of your shipments ("at least")
- an override for all shipment weights with a fixed value ("equals")
Enabling bundle products prices and weights means that if your shipment contains a bundle, its component prices and weights are proportionately calculated from the bundle parent.
Product barcode field
The next setting allows you to choose which Brightpearl field to use to pull in the product barcode.
Custom field mapping
The next few settings allow you to map Brightpearl custom fields to fields used on shipments.
The fields which can be mapped are as follows:
| Tax ID | The shipment recipient's personal or company tax ID. |
| IOSS | A sales order custom field used to store your IOSS number. |
| Commodity code | A product custom field used to store commodity codes. |
| Commodity description | A product custom field used to store commodity descriptions. |
| Commodity composition | A product custom field used to store commodity compositions. |
| Manufacturer country | A product custom field used to store manufacturer countries. |
| Instructions | A sales order custom field used to store customer shipping instructions. |
The custom fields must be mapped using the custom field code, visible in the custom field list under Settings > Custom fields.
Order status update ID
The next setting determines whether to update the sales order status in Brightpearl upon a successful shipment. Enter the order status ID into the field, which can be found using the inspect tool when looking at the list of sales order statuses.
Royal Mail tracking numbers
Choose whether to send tracking numbers to Brightpearl for all Royal Mail shipments, or only for shipments using a trackable service (e.g. "Tracked 24").
Product value fallback
Choose whether to use the cost price of a product as the product value if the selling price is 0.
Match the goods out note statuses
You can opt to require goods out notes are not processed unless they have a certain set of statuses, regardless of the trigger set in the main configuration.
For example, the above selection will mean that only goods notes which are both printed and picked will be sent to the courier, even if the trigger is just one or the other.
Multiple warehouse support
If multiple warehouse support is enabled, Shiptheory will retrieve order warehouse's address. The address can be used to craft shipping rules and could be sent to your carriers.
Carriers
When setting up Shiptheory, you can enable the carriers you use. Each carrier will require its own configuration.
If you wish to add new carriers, click "Manage carriers" in the menu next to your name.
When adding new carriers, you'll be taken to a screen listing all the carriers available to be enabled:
Click on the tile next to the relevant carrier to add it.
For more information about each carrier, please see Shiptheory's support documentation.
Set up shipping address
You'll need to set up a shipping address. The address will be sent to your carriers as the destination to collect the parcels.
You can set your shipping address up by clicking on the drop-down menu by your username, then clicking Advanced > Shipping location.
Shiptheory shipping label
When Shiptheory sends your shipment information to your carrier, it will receive a shipping label generated by that carrier.
Here is an example generated by DPD:
Shipping labels cannot be edited.
You can also embed this label within your Brightpearl templates. As Shiptheory receive labels back from carriers, the label is pushed back to Brightpearl's shipping label field.
You can include the label field in your templates in Brightpearl to automatically display your labels in your packing note template by following the steps below:
How to add your Shiptheory label to your Brightpearl templates
- View a goods out note in Brightpearl, and click the Edit template link:
- Click the mouse at the point in the template you would like the label to be shown. Then click on the Insert field at cursor dropdown menu and select 'Delivery label’.
- Save your template.
- Now, when you view a goods out note that has been processed by Shiptheory, you will see an integrated shipping label:
