How to setup a Carrier Account with APD Couriers

When looking to set up a new account with APD Couriersyou will need to contact their IT/ Accounts department and advise them that you are looking to despatch your account through MachShip. This team is generally contacted through your account manager Please cc integrations@machship.com in your email.

Your email should be as follows:

Hi Support team, 

I need to set up my account <insert account code> with APD Couriers so that I may consign with my new FMS partner MachShip. Can you please advise what my consignment note prefix should be? 

Furthermore, could you please setup so that tracking status updates and PODs are sent back to the standard MachShip tracking FTP directory.

Once the APD Parcels team responds then we need to fill out the specific options. 

These are:

Account Code - The account code will have been provided to you when your account was set up

Consignment Prefix - The consignment prefix will have been provided to you on the email sent above

Reference Pools - Reference pools are utilised by MachShip in order to maintain a count on connote, manifest, and item numbers. The reference pool will ensure that each of those numbers is unique to what we have sent to the carrier previously. More information can be obtained on reference pools here. APD Couriers requires the creation of just 1 reference pool, for the Connote number.

To create the reference pool select the Create Carrier Reference Pool button at the bottom of the page.

If you are creating a new account then the Reference Pools will be set to the following fields:

Pool Name - Set as APD Couriers Connote Pool <Account Code> 
Minimum Value - 0
Maximum Value - 9999999 (that is seven 9's)
Next Value -  0
Cyclical - No

It will appear as below:

Once created it will appear in the drop-down as below:

Should you already be trading on an existing account please set the next available field as 1000 consignments higher than the highest connote number on your previous account. 

Test:

Once the account has been set up and all of the rates have been added, you will need to run a test to ensure that upon go-live, everything will run successfully. To do this, create a consignment - please make Reference 1 and Reference 2 and the delivery special instructions THIS IS A TEST. Once this has been created please manifest the consignment to the carrier. If you experience any issues please contact support@machship.com.

If you receive a successful manifest message from MachShip then please send an email to the IT team and advise them that you are starting to despatch your APD Couriers account through MachShip and that you would like to receive verification on the test file and permission to start to trade. Please include the label pdf's for the manifest and the items.

Advise the APD team of the connote number and request that they should cancel this to ensure that you are not charged. Please cc integrations@machship.com on this email so we can help if required. 

On confirmation from the support team that the set-up is validated, you are free to begin to consign.