How To Set Up ShipEngine

Cetec’s new partnership with ShipEngine requires some setup to ensure the integration allows you to print labels from your desired carriers. The following outline details the setup of the ShipEngine tool within Cetec ERP, and includes technical details surrounding the API connection, configuration settings, and data setup requirements in order to connect and use ShipEngine with Cetec ERP.

API Key (sandbox vs live)

Insert the API key (from your ShipEngine account) into the config setting “ship_engine_api_key” in Admin » Config Settings inside Cetec ERP. To test the ShipEngine plugin, you will need to use a sandbox key which will have different carriers than any carrier linked to your ShipEngine account, and therefore you must change any relevant carrier IDs in Cetec ERP » Admin » Maintenance » ShipEngine Settings. This may be cumbersome if you are changing between live and sandbox APIs constantly. However, you will only need to do this once after the initial sandbox setup and testing.

Setting Up ShipEngine

First, you must setup an account with ShipEngine. Navigate to their website here to sign up - ShipEngine Sign Up. Upon signing up, you will be taken to your main dashboard. Navigate to the ‘Connections’ tab on the left-hand side and add your carriers. You will need to add them by clicking ‘Add a Carrier’ and logging in with each carrier account you have.
Next, you’ll want to navigate to the ‘API Management’ tab on the left-hand side of your screen. Go ahead and create a new API key by clicking ‘Create API Key’ on this screen. You may give it a name (Cetec ERP) for your reference. Copy that key by highlighting the entire string of text and clicking ‘Ctrl + C’ on your keyboard.
Now, login to your Cetec ERP environment and navigate to your configuration settings. Search for the configuration titled ‘ship_engine_api_key’. Copy the API string of text from ShipEngine and paste it into that field. You’ll want to logout and log back in so the system can refresh the connection between Cetec and ShipEngine.
After logging back in, navigate to your data maintenace tables (Admin»Maintenance»Data Maintenance), and select SHPCDE. If you are a current Cetec user, you likely have ship methods listed here. If you want, you can edit them with more detail and create more. These ship methods you add will represent your carrier ship methods (UPS Ground, UPS Air, Fedex Ground, etc.)
Finally, we will connect the ship methods in Cetec to the carrier options from ShipEngine. You’ll notice you have a new Maintenance option titled ‘ShipEngine Settings’ (Admin»Maintenance»ShipEngine Settings). On this screen, we display your ship methods listed on the left-hand side. Also, in the middle of your screen we display a dropdown of the carriers you added in your ShipEngine application. After selecting one of the carrier options, the service codes from ShipEngine populate on the right-hand side of your screen. You’ll want to copy the service codes and paste them to the corresponding Ship Method. Be sure to set defaults in the header maintenance section as well!
To use ShipEngine successfully and without errors, when you are testing, check to make sure all of your address fields (in both Customer ShipTo Addresses and in your internal company address configuration in Admin » Maintenance » Data Maintenance » LNAME (Location Name) ). Make sure on Customer ShipTo Addresses that the AddressCountry field is properly set and defaulted. If you end up getting a vague error message attempting to ship product inside Cetec ERP with ShipEngine, it is very likely an issue with Address formatting.

Carrier IDs

In Cetec ERP, you can ship product using your own company’s carrier accounts, or via customer provided or third-party carrier accounts.
Your carrier accounts will come from ShipEngine itself, and will be in the format of “SE” followed by a “-“ followed by six numbers. Example: “SE-827223”. These are input (one carrier account ID per SHPCDE entry you have setup in Cetec ERP » Admin » Maintenance » Data Maintenance » SHPCDE) via the ShipEngine settings screen in Cetec ERP and the Warehouse Carrier Accounts screen in Cetec ERP. You can find these menus (after following the above setup steps) via Admin » Maintenance. It is through these Carrier Account IDs that you will be billed for shipping charges.
Customer carrier accounts or third party carrier accounts are typically 6 alphanumeric characters (without the “se-“ prefix). They are stored in Cetec ERP either on the Customer record (see sidenav menu of any Customer record), the Customer Address record, or entered manually on the sales order edit page (field is Carrier Account #).
When you ship a sales order, Cetec ERP will scan a prioritized hierarchy of records looking for which carrier account ID to track/charge with the Shipment. That hierarchical order is as follow: 1- The carrier account specified on the Sales Order Edit screen -> 2- then Customer Address -> 3- Customer Record -> 4- Warehouse Carrier Accounts Menu -> 5- Admin>Maint>SHPCDE table -> 6- ShipEngine Default Carrier. The “Default” mentioned here is a required field per carrier and merely needs to be assigned the carrier’s ID if you have one carrier per account. If you are billing third party this should never be charged, but is required nonetheless by the ShipEngine API.

Address Info

Countries need to be referred to by their two letter codes. These are pulled from Data Maintenance tables AddressCountry and LNAME. AddressCountry uses the field UPS code and LNAME uses Country. In addition, LNAME also uses the separate City, State, Zip, Phone, and Company Name fields for the Ship From info on the label. States also need to be two letters such as TX, NY, CA etc. This applies to LNAME as well as the customer address or if a ‘temp ship to’ is used on an order. If any of these are not 2 letters you will get an error always when trying to create labels.
The attn line on the ship to address is required.
The customer’s phone number is used. If no phone number is given for the ship to address it is auto filled in with (999) 999-9999.

Freight

If you are using a warehouse carrier account or one of your default carrier accounts, freight should be added to the freight cost on the order Ship/Invoice screen in Cetec ERP. Otherwise this field will not be touched. (Note: when you delete a shipment the freight cost of that shipment is removed as well.)

How To Use ShipEngine Inside Cetec ERP