Shipping Plan vs. Purchase Order

Hello there!

Can someone explain the different between a Shipping Plan and a Purchase order? Both appear to have information around incoming inventory to a warehouse. Do both objects exist for all customers? Shipping Plan appears to be for sfapp specifically?

I can’t find any specific documentation on the two and some clarity would be great!

Daniel

Hey @daniellanger,

Thanks for reaching out and welcome to our Developer Community!
Looking into this inquiry now, I’ll update you shortly.

Best,
RayanP

Hey @daniellanger,

Thanks for hanging in there!

The purchase order tool covers incoming inventory that replenishes stock and is only available to our SaaS customers. The Shipping plan is a SFAPP feature to tell us what products you intend to ship, the quantities, and which shipping method you will use.

I’d highly recommend checking out our articles at https://software-help.shiphero.com/ for more detailed explanations and examples regarding these features.

Please let me know if you have any questions or concerns.

Best,
RayanP

Hi Rayanp,

hmmm I still don’t fully understand. when I go to https://software-help.shiphero.com/ and search for “shipping plan” nothing relevant is returned.

You said that purchase orders “is only available to our SaaS customers”. Can you clarify what that means? What is a saas customer in this case?

Daniel

Hey @daniellanger,

Thanks for hanging in there!

A SaaS customer for us is a customer that is using our software to ship and manage inventory etc in their own warehouse or the like, basically handling the fulfillment of your orders by yourself or with a source that is not ShipHero.

A FaaS customer for us is a customer where we(ShipHero) handle the fulfillment of your orders and keeping track of your orders etc. You will be using the SFAPP here.

I don’t believe test accounts can access SFAPP. The https://software-help.shiphero.com/, will help you answer questions related to the software side of things, hence there being no information regarding shipping plans because that is a fulfillment feature, accessible through SFAPP. You can see our articles related to our fulfillment customers here: https://fulfillment-help.shiphero.com/hc/en-us

Please let me know if anything was unclear or requires more explanation.
Happy to answer any questions!

Best,
RayanP

Ahhh ok that makes sense!

  • Is there a way via the API to determine if a customer is SaaS or FaaS?
  • If a customer is SaaS and we attempt to make an API call to the Shipping Plan API, what will happen?
  • Is there a universal endpoint for understanding incoming inventory? Or is it either Purchase Order or Shipping Plan depending on account type?

hey @sh-agent, any thoughts? thank you!

Hey @daniellanger,

Thanks for hanging in there!

I don’t understand the use case of this Question # 1. You can only interact with your account via the API, or your child accounts. If you’re interacting with your child accounts through the API then you must be a SaaS customer.

If a SaaS account tries to create a shipping plan, this message will be returned:
{ "errors": [ { "message": "Only ShipHero Fulfillment accounts can create shipping plans.", "operation": "shipping_plan_create", "field": "shipping_plan_create", "request_id": "641359878620dc325018e867", "code": 7 } ]

You could run this mutation in regards to the first question, to check.

For SaaS customers it will be the Purchase Order system. I want to double check and make sure I have the proper information before answering the fulfillment part of this question.

Please let me know if you have any questions or concerns.

Best,
RayanP

Hey @daniellanger,

Thanks for hanging in there!
Regarding your third question, Fulfillment accounts manage their incoming inventory through Shipping Plans while Software accounts handle inventory through Purchase Orders.

Please let me know if you have any questions or concerns.

Best,
RayanP

Got it, that makes perfect sense @sh-agent

Hopefully final question, is there a way to list shipping_plans? According to your docs there is only a query shipping_plan() endpoint, but no way to list all shipping plans. How can we list all shipping plans? Or how can we get a list of shipping_plan ids so we can get a shipping plan?

Thanks!
Daniel

Hey Team,

Thanks for hanging in there!

At the moment it looks like there is no way to list all of shipping plans through our Public API. I believe you will have to get their ID’s from the UI, which you’ll also be able to see the list of them there as well.

Please let me know if you have any questions or concerns.

Best,
RayanP

I see. We don’t have access to our client’s UI, so we have no way of getting these IDs. There’s no programatic way to get them? Can you place a feature request with engineering for a list Shipping Plans endpoint if it is confirmed there is no way to programmatically get IDs?

Hi @sh-agent just wanted to follow up on the above! Thanks

Hey Team,

Thanks for hanging in there.
I’ve gone ahead and passed along the feedback here to the team.

Please let me know if you have any questions or concerns.

Best,
RayanP

Thank you! @sh-agent

I just came across this in the API ShipHero GraphQL Public API Reference

Are these inbound objects automatically created when a Shipping Plan or Purchase Order is created? How does this object compare to Shipping Pans & Purchase Orders?

Hey @daniellanger,

Thanks for hanging in there!

I believe that you can add this field under a warehouse_products query and it will return information that pertains to any PO’s said product has. The information returned can be:

id String

legacy_id Int

sku String

warehouse_id String

po_id String

purchase_order_line_item_id String

po_date ISODateTime

quantity Int

quantity_received Int

quantity_rejected Int

sell_ahead Int

status String

Please let me know if you have any questions.

Best,
RayanP

Got it @sh-agent that make sense. What about Shipping Plans? Will this Inbound inventory be populated based on Shipping Plans for the product?

Hey @daniellanger,

Thanks for hanging in there!
I’ll have an update for you shortly regarding that question.

Please let me know if you have any questions or concerns.

Best,
Rayanp

Hey @daniellanger,

Thanks for hanging in there!

I can confirm that the inbound inventory will display based on Shipping Plans as well.
Please let me know if you have any questions or concerns.

Best,
RayanP

hello, any updates on being able to list shipping plans?