What are Item Contents and How can they be used

From a shipping perspective, carriers and freight providers will only request that senders provide detail on the outer packaging of the shipment. As a result, there can be an inability to declare or report on the individual components that make up that shipment. 

In order to tackle this, MachShip has introduced Item Contents.  This functionality will enable users to be able to specify a description for the item contents along with references and quantities.

Please note that Item Contents will only be utilised as a reference for you or your system and in the vast majority of cases will not be pushed across to the carriers. 

How to Add Item contents to a Consignment or Quote

In order to add Item Contents onto a Consignment or Quote in the MachShip UI, you would first look to add a shipping item.

Once that is complete, you will then have the option to Add Item Contents with the option like the below:

This will provide you with the Add Item Contents modal where you can add:

• Description (required): This is a free text field and will be a description of the content - (i.e. White Freight Label Rolls)
  
                       
• Reference 1 (optional):  An optional first reference for the item content line - ( i.e. Order Number)
  
                         
• Reference 2 (optional): Optional second reference for the item content line  - (i.e. Invoice Number)
  
                           
• Reference 3 (optional): Optional third reference for the item content line  - (i.e. Part Number)
  
                         
• Quantity (required): This will be a count of the number of the item on this line
  
                                                         

To add the Item Content simply select the Plus Icon:

From there you can simply repeat with all contents for the Item and then select Save.


The contents will then show as per below:

How to Move-Item Contents

If you need to consolidate or shift any of the Item Content descriptions in the MachShip UI, you can simply click on the content and drag and drop it onto another Item:

How to Add Item Contents via Import
In order to add in the item contents via an EDI import into MachShip, you would look to add the following mapping targets into your workflow task for the following: 

- Delimited Import
- XML Import
- JSON Import

To understand how to create a Workflow Task please refer to the articles linked here:  Workflows

These would be:

• Description (required): This is a free text field and will be a description of the content - (i.e White Freight Label Rolls)
• Reference 1 (optional): An optional first reference for the item content line - (i.e Order Number)
• Reference 2 (optional): Optional second reference for the item content line - (i.e Invoice Number)
• Reference 3 (optional): Optional third reference for the item content line  - (i.e. Part Number)
• Quantity (required): This will be a count of the number of the item on this line

Note: for the Delimited Import only one Item Content can be added per Line Item

How to Add Item Content Via API

Via the endpoint /apiv2/consignments/createConsignmentwithComplexItems a user specify the item contents for that item

• Description (required): This is a free text field and will be a description of the content - (i.e White Freight Label Rolls)
• Reference 1 (optional): An optional first reference for the item content line - (i.e Order Number)
• Reference 2 (optional): Optional second reference for the item content line - (i.e Invoice Number)
• Reference 3 (optional): Optional third reference for the item content line  - (i.e. Part Number)
• Quantity (required): This will be a count of the number of the item on this line.

Below sample query is how a user would set an Item Content of 5 White Freight Label Rolls on ORDER12345 and Invoice INV3456

{
  ...
      "consignmentItemContents": [
        {
          "description": "White Freight Label Rolls",
          "reference1": "ORDER12345",
          "reference2": "INV3456",
          "reference3": "PRT1234",
          "quantity": 5
        }
      ]
  ...
}

How to Include Item Contents on Reports

In order to extract from MachShip data files that will contain item level detail of the item contents, you can navigate through the below -

Export Report

Select Reports, then select Export Consignments

Enter in all the desired configuration ensuring that you select Show Item Information and then select Show Item Contents

MachShip will then append the item content information into the last columns of the report.

Note that if there are multiple Item Contents per Item then the item details will be duplicated.

Audit Report:
Select Reports, then select Consignment Audit Report

Enter in all the desired configuration ensuring that you select Show Item Information and then select Show Item Contents

MachShip will then append the item content information into the last columns of the report.

Note that if there are multiple Item Contents per Item then the item details will be duplicated