Create a consolidated shipment
By the end of this page you will have a consolidated shipment in the Carriyo Dashboard. One parent shipment carries a group of child shipments on a shared leg. You can build it parent first, or select existing shipments on the Shipments list and consolidate them in one go. For when to use consolidation, see Consolidated shipments.
| Parent shipment | Child shipment | |
|---|---|---|
| What it moves | The consolidated load, for example warehouse to hub | One customer's parcel, for example hub to customer |
| Page title | Consolidated Forward Shipment | Forward Shipment |
| Items and payment | None. The form hides items and payment details | As for any shipment |
There are two ways to build one:
- Parent first (steps 1 and 2). Create an empty parent, then add existing shipments to it.
- Children first, in bulk (step 3). Select the shipments on the Shipments list and let Carriyo create the parent.
Both paths end with a draft parent that you complete and book (steps 4 and 5).
Before you start
- The child shipments must already exist. Each one must be a forward shipment in Draft or Error status, with the same merchant as the parent.
- You link shipments from the parent. A child's own page has no field for choosing a parent.
- For Carriyo to book the children for you, the parent's carrier account needs consolidated shipping turned on. Step 5 covers where to turn it on.
1. Create the parent shipment
Go to Ship → Shipments, click + in the toolbar, and choose Consolidated Shipment.
Choose Consolidated Shipment from the + menu.
The Create Consolidated Forward Shipment form opens. It's shorter than the normal create form:
- Shipment Number and Order Number are pre-filled with a
CS-reference. Keep them or enter your own. - There's no Payment Info section and no item details. A parent carries children, not products.
- Assigned Carrier Account has no automatic option. Shipping rules don't pick a carrier for a parent, so you choose one. The picker lists every carrier account for the merchant, including ones that can't consolidate. Only DHL Express, UPS and FedEx book a consolidation, and only with the setting on. See Book the consolidated shipment.
- Save As Draft is the only button. You can't book a parent before it has children.
The consolidated create form: no items or payment details, and draft-only on create.
Set the Merchant, since only that merchant's shipments can become children. Fill in Ship From and Ship To for the parent's leg, then click Save As Draft.
Duplicate works on a parent and on a child. When the load travels to the same hub every time, duplicate an earlier parent rather than filling this form in again. The copy is a draft consolidated parent with no children, so add this run's children in step 2. A duplicated child comes back as an ordinary shipment with no parent attached. See Duplicate a shipment.
2. Add child shipments to the parent
On the parent's detail page, scroll to the Child Shipments card and click + (Add Child Shipments).
Add children from the Child Shipments card on the parent.
The Add Child Shipments dialog lists only the shipments that can join this parent. A shipment appears when it is:
- a forward shipment for the parent's merchant, created in the last six months
- in Draft or Error status
- not a parent itself, and not already a child of another parent. A shipment can belong to only one consolidation
Search by shipment ID, order number, or tracking number, or narrow the list with the Quick Filter and the filter icon. Tick the shipments and click Add Shipments.
Search, select the shipments, and add them.
To add children with a barcode scanner, click the scan icon (Scan Child Shipment) next to + instead. It accepts a shipment ID, order number, reference number, or tracking number. When a scan is rejected, the message says why. Typical reasons are a different merchant, a reverse shipment, the wrong status, or an existing consolidation.
The children now appear on the card, and the header shows how many there are.
Open this parent's children in the list, or remove one.
To take a child out, select its row and click Remove Selected. The shipment stays in Carriyo as a normal, independent shipment. The icon next to the card title opens the Shipments list filtered to this parent's children.
You can add or remove children while the parent is in Draft or Error status. Once the parent is booked, the child list is locked.
3. (Bulk) consolidate existing shipments
Use this path when the child shipments are already in Carriyo and ready to be grouped.
On the Shipments list, tick the shipments you want to group. A selection bar appears above the rows. Open More bulk actions, the ⋯ button in that bar, and choose Consolidate. The counter reads qualifying/selected: Consolidate (3/3) means all three selected shipments can be consolidated.
Open the ⋯ menu on the selection bar and choose Consolidate.
A shipment qualifies when it's in Draft or Error status, has a merchant, and isn't already a parent or a child. If your selection spans several merchants, Carriyo silently keeps the largest group that shares one merchant.
The Create Consolidated Shipment dialog lists the shipments that will become children. Click Create Consolidated Shipment, then Go to Consolidated Shipment to open the new parent in a new tab.
Confirm the shipments to consolidate.
A parent created this way is a bare draft. It has the merchant and the children, but no pickup details, dropoff details, or carrier. Complete it in step 4 before you book.
A parent created in bulk has children and a merchant, but no addresses or carrier yet.
4. Complete the parent while it's a draft
While the parent and its children are in Draft or Error status, every detail stays editable. After booking, only custom attributes can change, through Edit Attributes, and only while the shipment is in Booked status. So fill everything in before you book. See Edit a shipment.
Open the actions menu (⋯) at the top right of the parent's detail page and click Edit & Book.
Edit & Book opens the draft parent for editing.
The Confirm Consolidated Forward Shipment page opens with the parent's details and its Child Shipments card. Here Assigned Carrier Account is required. Fill in Ship From and Ship To for the parent's leg, such as your warehouse to the hub or the carrier's consolidation point.
Complete the parent, then save it as a draft or book it.
Click Save As Draft to keep working on it later, or go on to step 5.
If you change the parent's Merchant on the edit page, Carriyo removes every child from it. Children must share the parent's merchant.
5. Book the consolidated shipment
Click Save & Book on the edit page, or Book & Track from the parent's actions menu.
Only one thing is checked up front: the parent needs an Assigned Carrier Account. Carriyo checks everything else after you book, so a problem moves the parent to Error instead of showing on the form.
When consolidated shipping is on, booking fails and the parent moves to Error if:
- The parent has too few children: DHL Express needs at least one, FedEx at least two. (A FedEx or UPS parent with no children isn't treated as a consolidation at all. It books as an ordinary shipment.)
- Any child is in a status other than Draft, Error or Cancelled.
Once the parent books, Carriyo works through the children. Each Draft child is booked, and each Cancelled or Error child is reprocessed. A child that is already booked, or further along, is skipped.
What happens after that depends on the carrier:
- DHL Express. The parent books straight away, and Carriyo then books each child on the parent's carrier account.
- FedEx and UPS. The parent stays Pending while the children book. Once they are all booked or ready to ship, the parent is confirmed. If any child ends in Error, so does the parent. The same happens if the children take too long and Carriyo runs out of retries.
- Consolidated shipping off, or any other carrier. The parent books as a single shipment and no child checks run. Book the children yourself, on whichever carrier accounts they need.
Turn the setting on in Settings → Carrier Accounts, on the carrier account's Account Setup tab:
| Carrier | Turn on | Also required |
|---|---|---|
| DHL Express | Enable Consolidated Shipping (DHL Break Bulk Express Service) | Consolidated Shipping Account Number |
| UPS | Enable Consolidated Shipping (UPS World Ease Service) | The UPS World Ease Settings section below it |
| FedEx | Enable FedEx Consolidation Shipping | Consolidation Type and Clearance Facility Location ID, under FedEx Consolidation Shipping |
Find consolidated shipments
On the Shipments list, parents and children stay separate rows; the list doesn't group them. An icon under the order number and customer name tells them apart. Hover over it to see Consolidated Shipment (a parent) or Consolidated Child Shipment (a child). Clicking a child's icon opens its parent in a new tab.
Icons under the shipment number mark parents and children.
To see only consolidated shipments, click the filter icon, choose Consolidated from Select Filter, and set it to yes.
Filter the list to consolidated shipments.
On a parent's page, the title reads Consolidated Forward Shipment. The Child Shipments card at the bottom lists every child with its status and carrier (see step 2).
On a child's page, the header shows the parent's shipment number next to a consolidation icon. Click it to open the parent.
A child links back to its parent from the header.
If you've switched to the new Shipment page, a parent lists its children on a Children tab. The tab also sums up the children's items, weight, and value. A child shows a Part of chip with the parent's shipment number.
Labels and invoices
- Labels. The parent has one, and so does every child. A child's label is an ordinary shipping label for its own leg, with its own tracking number.
- Commercial invoice. Customs clears the consolidation on the parent's invoice, which carries the children's goods, values, and customs details. A child needs its label only.
Documents appear once a shipment is booked. Find them in the Documents card on the Summary tab, or in the Documents column on the Shipments list. Each row is named for what it is, such as Default Label or DHL Commercial Invoice. See Print shipment labels and documents.
| Carrier | Labels | Commercial invoice |
|---|---|---|
| DHL Express | Parent and each child | On the parent, listing the children's goods |
| FedEx | Parent and each child. The parent's arrives once FedEx confirms the consolidation | On the parent. Consolidation Documentation Types on the carrier account decides which documents you get |
| UPS | Parent and each child | UPS builds it at master-shipment closeout and clears customs on it. It isn't returned to Carriyo, so the parent shows none |
If your account generates its own commercial invoices in Document Settings, a child can carry one as well. It isn't the document the carrier clears the consolidation on.
Print the parent's label and attach it to the last package of the consignment.
Cancel a consolidated shipment
Cancel the parent, not the children one at a time. Use Cancel Shipment from the actions menu on the parent's page, or from the bulk menu on the Shipments list. A reason code is optional. See Cancel a shipment.
You can cancel a parent while it's in Draft, Error, Pending, Booked, Ready to Ship or Out for Collection status. Once the load has shipped, it's too late.
Cancelling the parent asks the carrier to cancel the consolidation. If the carrier accepts, Carriyo cancels every child for you. If it refuses, the parent still reads Cancelled while the children carry on unchanged, so check them before you treat the whole set as off. Children that have already shipped or been delivered are left alone, and Carriyo skips them quietly rather than failing the rest.
On UPS and FedEx you have a window: cancel before the consolidation is confirmed. Up to that point the carrier takes the cancellation. Afterwards the request is no longer sent, and the consignment stands.
| Carrier | What Carriyo sends the carrier | Children |
|---|---|---|
| DHL Express | Nothing. DHL Express has no cancellation API, so the cancellation is recorded in Carriyo only | Always cancelled with the parent |
| UPS | A cancellation for the World Ease master shipment, while the consolidation is still open | Cancelled only if UPS accepts it |
| FedEx | A request to delete the consolidation, while FedEx hasn't confirmed it yet | Cancelled with the parent, unless FedEx rejects the request |
Cancelling always marks the parent and its children Cancelled in Carriyo, even when nothing reaches the carrier — always with DHL Express, and with UPS and FedEx once the consolidation is confirmed.
To cancel one child on its own, cancel it as you would any shipment. The parent and the other children are unaffected, and the parent goes on listing it. The Dashboard hides Cancel Shipment on a child whose carrier is DHL Express; cancel the parent instead.
What's different for parent and child shipments
Parent shipments
- Carry children, not products, so they have no items and no payment details.
- Take the carrier account you pick. Shipping rules don't choose one for a parent.
- Can't become the child of another parent. Consolidations don't nest.
Child shipments
- Stay ordinary forward shipments, each with its own label and tracking number, and belong to at most one parent.
- Show the parent's journey on their tracking page until the child itself is picked up for its own leg.
Common mistakes
- Expecting an import to link parents and children. Import can create both: it accepts a Consolidated column that marks a shipment as a parent. What it can't do is link them. Do that in the Dashboard, either by adding children on the parent (step 2) or by selecting the children and using Consolidate (step 3). The API can link them too.
- Booking children before consolidating them. A booked shipment can't be added as a child. Keep children in Draft (or Error) until they're linked.
- Booking a bulk-created parent as is. It has no pickup details, dropoff details, or carrier account, so booking fails. Complete it with Edit & Book first.
- One child on a FedEx consolidation. FedEx rejects a parent with fewer than two children.
- Changing the parent's merchant after adding children. The child list is cleared. Set the merchant first.
- Leaving a shipment attached when it should travel on its own. A child is booked with the consolidation, on the parent's carrier account. To send one separately, take it off the parent with Remove Selected (step 2) while the parent is still in Draft or Error. It goes back to being an ordinary shipment.