Shipment

A single physical item to be shipped by Canada Post. Shipments have a logical counterpart: the collection of data about the shipment. Your shipping system provides the data to Canada Post so that Canada Post can deliver the shipment according to your preferences and specifications.

Group

The purpose of a group-id is to group several shipments together to include on the same manifest. For example, grouping is useful in the following scenarios:

• You have multiple fulfillment locations.
• You want all shipments in a group to be shipped on the same day.
• You want to group shipments together for internal reference or billing purposes.

A group controls which shipments are grouped together in one Transmit Shipments request and consequently which shipments are grouped together for billing of manifests.

Key features of groups are as follows:

• A group allows separate pickups or drop-offs from different physical locations.
• A service provider for multiple customers automatically receives separation for each customer they are serving.
• Any character value may be used in a group name. A new group name automatically creates a group when the first shipment member is created under that name.
• A group name repeated from a previous shipment links the new shipments with all others in the same group.
• The same group name CANNOT be used to link shipments between different "behalf of" customers.
• The list of shipments within a single group can be accessed by invoking the Get Shipments service with the group specified.

Additional behaviour of groups is described below under Manifest.

Manifest

A manifest is proof of payment for a collection of physical shipments. If you are a commercial customer and you use contract shipping web services you must produce a hard copy of your manifest and provide to Canada Post when we pick up your shipments or when you drop off your shipments at a mail processing plant.

To create a manifest, you must use the Transmit Shipments web service call. Transmit Shipments is a mandatory call. It triggers the upload of shipment data for billing and tracking systems. The response from a transmit shipments call provides you with the information you need to invoke the Get Manifest web service and then the Get Artifact service, which in turn allows you to print your manifest. We monitor all shipments that have not followed this process. Failure to comply will result in manual billing at full rates and/or a loss of your automation discount.

Manifest groupings are created by Canada Post logic after a transmit request is made for one or more customer group codes. The Canada Post logic creates groupings required to segregate the shipments for billing or delivery purposes.

For billing, manifests are segregated by the payer customer number.

For delivery purposes, manifests are segregated by domestic, U.S.A. and international destinations and drop locations.