Automate Ship Via Translations

Ship Via refers to the Carrier and Carrier Service used to ship a shipment. StarShip allows you to automate the import of Ship Via values from your source interface (ERP or Ecommerce system) into the StarShip shipment. You can also customize the Ship Via based on the carrier values set up in your source interface.

The StarShip Carrier/Service fields are likely mapped by default for your source interface. Even so, we then need a way to make sure that StarShip gets values that it recognizes. To do that, you will define value translations between the source interface Ship Via values and StarShip Carrier/Service values so that the Carrier-Service is automatically populated.

Navigate to the Carrier-Service Field

1. Select Setup > Source Interfaces > “Your interface.”
2. On the Interfaces page, click the Customize Interface button for a document you ship against (Orders, Invoices, etc.).
   
3. Expand the StarShip Field group “Shipment” and select “Carrier Information”.
   
4. Click the “Carrier-Service” field. The “Maps from” field should be set to your source interface, and the source document field containing the Ship Via value.
   

Value Translations

This is where the magic happens, and where your Ship Via values are transformed into StarShip values – the Value Translations section.

If your ERP or Ecommerce system supports it, StarShip can automatically retrieve the Ship Via values from your source interface. In this case, you can configure how the shipping methods are mapped to the Carrier-Service field in StarShip by making selections from the drop-down list.

 

If there is no value list for the Ship Via in your source interface, you can manually add your commonly used Ship Via values that StarShip can use when importing the order or other document.

When you are done setting up the values for the carrier, click Save All Maps.

 

Default Value Translation Rules for Ship Via

If you don’t set up value translations, StarShip will attempt to match the Ship Via values from your source interface using the following rules (applied in order):

1. If an identical carrier exists in StarShip, then it is selected…
2. …otherwise the carrier whose SCAC (Standard Carrier Alpha Code) matches exactly gets selected.
3. If not found, then StarShip selects the carrier with a similar name.
4. If no similar match is found, StarShip does not select a carrier. The value translation defaults to the first carrier available in the list.