Manage shipments and loading orders in SamBooks: own fleet, carriers and ShippyPro

From a carriage-free sales order to delivery: plan the transport, choose between your own fleet, a third-party carrier or a courier connected through ShippyPro, generate the loading order and the delivery note, and keep the customer updated with automatic tracking.

What it's for

The Shipments section (left menu, under Logistics) is where SamBooks turns a sales order you have to ship yourself into a loading order: the document that organizes pickup, stops, packages and the carrier. From here you assign the transport to your own fleet (own account), to a supplier acting as carrier with an agreed price, or to a courier managed through the ShippyPro integration (rate comparison, label, pickup). Once the loading order is ready to leave, you generate from it the sales delivery note that travels with the goods: stock is only drawn down once that delivery note is issued.

Prerequisites

• A sales order confirmed with carriage terms Free (on our account): only these orders appear among the ones to plan (orders with carriage terms Carriage forward stay with the customer and never reach this list).
• To assign transport to a third-party carrier: a supplier set up as a carrier (you can create one on the fly from the wizard, see below).
• To use a courier: your company's ShippyPro account connected — you can connect it later too, the loading order is still created in the meantime.
• A user with the Manager, Administrative or Logistics role (the latter can only write in the Warehouse/Logistics area, which includes shipments); the Viewer role can only view.

Step-by-step guide

1. Open Shipments and find the order to plan

In the left menu, under Logistics, open Shipments. The page opens on the Orders to plan tab: sales orders with carriage terms Free (on our account) land here automatically as soon as they're confirmed. If the table is empty, the message "No orders to plan" reminds you that only confirmed carriage-free orders show up here.

You can filter orders by number or customer (Search field), by pickup or delivery province, and by period.

2. Start the "New loading order" wizard

You can open it two ways:

• press the New loading order button, top right: the wizard opens from scratch, on the Source step with the From orders tab selected (the alternative, Manual lines, is for a loading order with no sales order attached: in that case you enter pickup, recipient and item rows by hand);
• or click directly on a row in the table: the order's logistics summary opens (customer, carriage terms, pickup/destination, lines and packages); at the bottom, press Create loading order and the wizard opens with that order already selected.

On the Source step, From orders tab, select one or more rows with the checkbox:

• if you select a single order, the Packages to load field is editable — it starts at the maximum (the whole remaining quantity) and you can lower it to load only part of the packages (partial loading order, see step 11);
• if you select several orders, SamBooks proposes a multi-stop loading order (step 10): each order shows its whole remainder, with no option to reduce it row by row.

Press Next to move to the Transport step.

3. Choose how to ship

On the Transport step, choose one of three modes:

• Own account — you transport with your own vehicles, no third-party carrier;
• Carrier — you assign the transport to a supplier acting as carrier, with an agreed price;
• ShippyPro — you generate the label and book the pickup through a courier connected via the ShippyPro integration (the courier is chosen in the next step).

Whichever mode you pick, the step also shows the load summary (packages, weight, volume), a preview of the pickup and delivery stops, and the Pickup warehouse, Expected pickup date and Notes fields.

4. Own account: create the loading order with your own fleet

Select Own account. An optional Transport cost field appears: it's an internal cost estimate, different from the Transp. budget shown in the table (that one stays a plain reference taken from the order, not the real cost). Press Create loading order: the loading order is created in Assigned status, with no carrier and no purchase order attached.

5. Third-party carrier: pick the supplier and the price

Select Carrier. In the Carrier field, search the supplier by name or VAT number. If the carrier doesn't exist yet in your registry, press Create carrier at the bottom of the dropdown: a new supplier form opens. Fill it in and, before saving, turn on the "Is a carrier" toggle — if you leave it off, SamBooks won't recognize the supplier as a selectable carrier for a loading order. The newly created supplier is selected automatically in the Carrier field.

Fill in Agreed carrier price: this is the actual price agreed with the carrier, different from the order's Transp. budget, which stays just an estimate. Press Create loading order: the loading order is created Assigned with the carrier and the price saved.

6. ShippyPro courier: create the loading order and move to shipment

Select ShippyPro. The button changes to Create and configure: clicking it creates the loading order right away (status Assigned) and the wizard moves to the Shipment step, where you compare rates and generate the label (step 8). If you'd rather stop here, close the wizard with Done: the loading order stays created with the "To complete" badge, and you can pick it up again any time from the loading order's row (Manage ShippyPro icon) or from its detail view (step 13).

If the ShippyPro integration isn't connected yet, the Shipment step shows the "ShippyPro not connected" notice with the Connect ShippyPro button: the loading order is still created, and you'll complete it as soon as you connect the account (next step).

7. Connect your ShippyPro account (one time)

From Shipments, the button at the top, Connect ShippyPro (it becomes ShippyPro integration once connected), opens the connection dialog; you'll also find it under Settings → Company settings → Integrations, ShippyPro card, Connect ShippyPro button (then Manage). The dialog itself walks you through the steps:

1. on ShippyPro, open API → API Keys and create a key of type "PII Excluded" (recommended) or "Full Access" — not "Maps";
2. paste the key into the API key field and press Test connection to verify it before saving;
3. press Connect: if you leave the Import my carriers checkbox on, SamBooks imports the carriers already connected on your ShippyPro account, and shows the automatic tracking webhook URL to paste into ShippyPro (the "Webhook for automatic tracking" section, with a Copy button for each value).

Once the account is connected, the badge shows "Connected" and you can see the Last verified and Last carrier sync dates. Each company connects its own ShippyPro account, under its own contract: the key is encrypted and never shown in full. To change it, use Update API key; to remove the connection, use Disconnect (it asks for confirmation: the saved key is deleted and you can reconnect the account at any time).

8. Compare rates and generate the label

From the wizard's Shipment step — or by reopening a "To complete" courier loading order from the Manage ShippyPro icon or button — press Compare rates: SamBooks queries the carriers connected on ShippyPro and shows the list with carrier, service and price, flagging the "Cheapest" one.

Before generating the label, you can open Advanced options to enter Insurance (€), Cash on delivery (€), or, by turning on Customize parcel size, correct length, width, height and weight against the data already stored on the item record.

Once you've picked a rate, press Generate label: SamBooks first shows a confirmation request with the chosen carrier and price, because the action has a real effect at the carrier (a shipment created and billed under your ShippyPro contract) and isn't voidable with every carrier; confirm only after checking the rate, and SamBooks creates the shipping label with the carrier. Once ready, download the label with Download label PDF; you can also press Refresh tracking or, if you picked the wrong carrier or rate, Void label (it asks for confirmation: voiding also cancels it with the carrier and the loading order goes back to "To complete").

9. Book the pickup with the carrier

On the same screen, "Carrier pickup" section: set the Pickup date, then press Load available slots to pick a time slot offered by the carrier (if the carrier doesn't offer any, you can still book by entering just the date), and confirm with Book pickup.

10. One loading order for several orders together (multi-stop)

If several orders from the same run need to ship together, select them all on the wizard's Source step (multiple checkboxes, From orders tab): SamBooks creates a single multi-stop loading order and merges deliveries to the same address into one stop. Continue with the Transport step exactly as for a single-order loading order (own account, carrier or ShippyPro).

11. Shipping one order across several loading orders (partial)

If you want to load only part of an order's packages — the rest will ship in a later loading order — select it on its own on the Source step and lower the Packages to load field below the proposed remainder: a "partial" badge appears. The order stays visible in Orders to plan with the remaining packages still to ship, ready for a new loading order whenever you want to complete it.

12. From the loading order to the delivery note: "Create DN"

Once the loading order is ready to leave, open its detail view from the Loading orders tab and press Create DN. SamBooks generates the delivery note (sales delivery note), inheriting the customer, destination and lines from the loading order and the sales order. The loading order moves from Assigned to In transit and, if it has a third-party carrier with an agreed price, SamBooks also generates the purchase order to the carrier for the transport service.

Stock isn't drawn down at this point: that only happens once the delivery note is issued from the sales delivery notes page, not when the loading order or the draft delivery note is created.

Once the delivery note is created, the Create DN and Cancel commands disappear from the loading order: the action can't be repeated on the same loading order.

13. The loading order detail: PDF, label and cancellation

From the loading order's detail view (or from the icons on its row) you'll find:

• Loading order (PDF) — the printable loading order document (sender, stops, packages, signatures): always available;
• Download label PDF — only if a label has already been generated for the loading order (step 8);
• Manage ShippyPro — only on non-cancelled courier loading orders, to generate or complete the label and pickup at any later time;
• Create DN — only on an Assigned loading order with an order attached and no delivery note created yet;
• Cancel — only on an Assigned loading order with no delivery note attached: cancels the loading order and frees the order again in Orders to plan.

14. Notifying the customer: automatic tracking

For the customer to receive an email at every step of the shipment, go to Settings → Company settings → Tax profile, "Delivery and tracking" card, and turn on the Shipment tracking to the customer toggle. From then on, the recipient set on the delivery stop gets an email when the loading order moves to Assigned, when it moves to In transit (when the delivery note is created), and when the shipment is marked Delivered.

15. Letting Sam do it instead of doing it by hand

Every operation described above — finding the orders to plan, creating an own-account or carrier loading order, connecting ShippyPro, comparing rates, generating the label, booking the pickup, creating the delivery note, cancelling a loading order or turning on customer tracking — is also available by talking to Sam from the chat panel: the two paths, form and chat, are equivalent and produce exactly the same result on the same loading order. You can pick whichever is more convenient at the time, even switching between them on the same document.

Tips

• The Transp. budget shown on the Orders to plan tab is only a reference estimate taken from the sales order. The actual cost you agree with the carrier goes in the wizard as Agreed carrier price (or Transport cost for own-account transport): they're two distinct figures, don't mix them up when you read the loading order and the order side by side.
• For a multi-stop loading order, SamBooks doesn't require the selected orders to share the same customer or destination: double-check the route makes sense before creating it.
• You can ask Sam for the same operations in a sentence, for example: "which carriage-free orders are still to plan?", "create an own-account loading order for order 22/2026", "compare ShippyPro rates for loading order SP-2026-00012 and generate the cheapest label".

Common errors

• Carrier not valid — SamBooks refuses to save the loading order because the selected (or just-created) supplier doesn't have the "Is a carrier" toggle on: open its record and turn it on.
• Invalid or wrong-type ShippyPro API key — ShippyPro rejects the key you pasted because it isn't the right type: on ShippyPro, generate an API key of type "PII Excluded" or "Full Access" and try again with Test connection before Connect.
• "No orders to plan" on the first tab — this is expected if you have no sales orders confirmed with carriage terms Free (on our account): only those show up in this list. Check the order's carriage terms if you expected to find it here.
• "ShippyPro not connected" on the Shipment step — the courier loading order has still been created: connect the integration (step 7) and pick up again from Manage ShippyPro whenever you're ready.

FAQ

Can I generate the label without comparing rates first? No: before Generate label you must press Compare rates to see the available carriers and pick the right one.

What happens if I void a label I already generated? SamBooks voids it with the carrier too, and the loading order goes back to "To complete": you can compare rates again and generate a new label.

Is stock drawn down when I create the loading order or the delivery note? No. Stock is only drawn down once the delivery note generated from the loading order is issued — not when the loading order is created, nor when the draft delivery note is created.

Can I edit a loading order after creating it? You can act on its status through the available actions (Create DN, Cancel, ShippyPro management); a loading order that already has a delivery note is no longer cancellable or editable on the transport side.

What does "multi-stop loading order" mean? It's a single loading order that covers several sales orders: deliveries to the same address are merged into a single stop on the document.

Can I create a loading order with no sales order attached? Yes, with the Manual lines tab on the wizard's Source step: you enter the customer, sender/pickup, recipient/delivery and item rows by hand.

Related features

• Manage your sales orders — a confirmed carriage-free order is the starting point of every loading order.
• Sales delivery notes — the transport document generated by "Create DN", with stock drawn down once it's issued.
• Supplier registry — where a supplier is created, or marked, as a carrier.
• Purchase orders — where you find the transport-service purchase order generated for loading orders with a third-party carrier.