Overview

This ShipHawk ERP Integration Guide is for ShipHawk partners and third-party developers building an integration between an ERP system and ShipHawk.

The page introduces key concepts:

After reviewing this page, you can learn about the integration requirements from the following pages:

Terminology

Term	Definition
Source	The system you are integrating ShipHawk with (typically an ERP system).
App	The name of the solution that contains the code that enables integration and interaction between Source and ShipHawk. “Connector” or “Plug-in” may be used interchangeably with App.
Order	In ShipHawk, an Order is the object in ShipHawk that represents an order that is ready for shipment.
Shipment	In ShipHawk a Shipment is the object that represents a shipment.
Proposed Shipment	A Proposed Shipment is an object in ShipHawk that represents the intermediate state between an Order and a Shipment. A Proposed Shipment contains the details about how certain items from an Order should be shipped. ShipHawk generates Proposed Shipments asynchronously as Orders are created in ShipHawk. A Proposed Shipment is a mutable object that the warehouse team interacts with during fulfillment. In contrast, a Shipment (and its package details) is not editable once created: Shipments can only progress through delivered status or cancelled status.
Warehouse	The object in ShipHawk that represents the location used to fulfill an Order.
Merchant	The enterprise using ShipHawk (and an ERP), such as an eCommerce company.
Customer	The merchant’s customer, a buyer, consumer, or recipient the items being shipped.

Understanding Orders in ShipHawk

Orders in ShipHawk represent any kind of order (sales orders, purchase orders, transfer orders, and so on) that contains items/SKUs that are ready to be shipped.

In some ERPs, the concept of what’s been purchased is separate from the concept of what’s ready to be fulfilled. For instance, NetSuite has Sales Orders (what’s been purchased), and then Item Fulfillments (what’s ready to be fulfilled). While the Sales Order contains all of the items purchased, the Item Fulfillment contains only the items that are ready to be fulfilled. Similarly, Acumatica has Sales Orders (what’s been purchased), and then Shipments (what’s ready to be fulfilled).

In almost all cases, you will want to have ShipHawk sync with the ERP object that represents what’s ready to be fulfilled to create the order object in ShipHawk, to ensure you only fulfill the items that are ready (and in inventory) to be shipped.