Kopierer du stadig sporingsnumre? Sadan fungerer fragtsync

When the warehouse ships an order, somebody still has to tell the customer. Without a connection between the systems, that means copy-pasting: tracking number out of the ERP or WMS, into the order in the webshop, mark as shipped, repeat per parcel. This article covers why shipment data flows the opposite way from every other flow, what transfers, and the per-platform details that decide how complete the automated version really is.

The manual routine

Every flow earlier in this series moved data into the ERP: orders, payouts, refunds, customers. Shipments run the other way. The shipment is born on the warehouse side - in the ERP's logistics module, a WMS, or a shipping platform - and the information has to travel back through the webshop to reach the one person who genuinely cares: the customer waiting for a parcel.

Without a connection, the travel is manual. Someone opens the shipment, copies the tracking number, finds the order in the webshop, pastes it in, marks the order as shipped - and repeats for the next parcel. At low volume it's a routine; at campaign volume it's the routine that gets skipped. And a skipped one has a distinctive failure mode: the customer emails 'where is my order' to a shop that already shipped it. The order is done in the warehouse and unfinished on the website - two systems, two truths.

Which system can send a shipment

A detail that matters before any automation talk: not every system on the ERP side has a shipment to send. Accounting-focused ERPs often have no shipment concept at all - an order becomes an invoice, and logistics happens elsewhere. Shipment data lives in the systems that handle physical goods: ERPs with logistics modules (Visma.net, Business Central), warehouse management systems, and shipping platforms. If the shipping reality lives in a WMS or transport system, that's the source the integration reads - not the accounting system.

The practical consequence: 'sync my shipments' is a question about which of your systems knows about parcels. For some merchants that's the ERP; for many, it's a WMS or shipping platform sitting next to it.

What shipment sync does

With an integration platform between the systems, the flow is short:

1. A shipment is created in the ERP or WMS - with its parcels, and a tracking number per parcel.

2. The integration picks it up. For most source systems this is a scheduled fetch rather than an instant event - many ERPs don't send webhooks for shipments - so 'automatically' means within the sync interval, typically minutes, not the second the warehouse clicks ship.

3. The order is updated in the webshop - the shipment recorded on the order, tracking numbers attached, so the shop and the customer see what the warehouse already knows.

From there, the webshop's own machinery takes over: shipping confirmations, tracking links, the customer's order page - all fed by data that arrived without anyone retyping it.

Where it gets harder

This flow has the most honest footnotes in the series, and they're worth knowing before choosing any integration - ours included:

• Multi-parcel shipments are handled differently per webshop. Some platforms receive every parcel's tracking number - Magento records a tracking row per parcel, Norce a package per parcel. Others accept only one: Shopify, WooCommerce, and Centra receive a multi-parcel shipment with the first parcel's tracking number only. For a merchant who regularly splits shipments, this single detail decides how complete the automation is.

• Some platforms have prerequisites. WooCommerce needs a shipment-tracking extension installed before tracking numbers can be written at all - and a shipment without a tracking number can fail to transfer rather than arrive blank.

• Carrier information varies. Where the tracking number lands is standardized; which carrier name and tracking link accompany it depends on the platform - sometimes from the shipment, sometimes from integration settings.

• A parcel without a tracking number is a real case. Local deliveries and pickups happen. What arrives in the webshop differs by platform - a fallback reference, or a blank. Worth knowing which before the first tracking-less shipment, not after.

None of these are exotic; they're the difference between a demo and production. Details like these rarely appear in a sales conversation, but they decide how well the flow works in practice - which is why they're worth asking about before choosing an integration, whichever vendor it comes from.

What this means in practice

Shipment sync is the flow where the customer notices the result directly: the confirmation email arrives, the tracking link works, and 'where is my order' emails stop being a support category. The work it replaces is small per parcel and constant in aggregate - the exact profile of work that should move from a person to a connection.

If tracking numbers in your company still travel by copy-paste - or if your multi-parcel shipments are precisely where the routine breaks - the question is the one this series keeps asking:

Check if your systems are already connected: junipeer.io/integrations