One of the most common requests we receive from our customers is for the ability to track shipments created using our Bill of Lading tool.

The traditional method to provide this functionality is to set up EDI 214 with each carrier the customer uses, and then we have to apply various business rules to match the carrier status transmission to the shipment created in our system. While not perfect, it does a respectable job – but with several drawbacks.

There can be a lot of set up time involved, with the effort required to get the Letter of Authorization from the customer, then submit the 214 setup requests to each carrier, being put into their work queue (with a various amount of waiting), verifying test transmissions, etc. And there was always the chance of the status update failing due to a variety of reasons, such as miskeyed reference numbers by the carrier, or the shipper not providing the Bill of Lading to the carrier, etc.

So we wanted to find a way to provide an easy way for our customers to track their shipments without any set up time or additional cost.

What did we do? We wired into over 20 LTL carriers web tracking pages and made those links available from our reporting / status tracking pages. The only requirement is that the carrier pro number be entered as a reference number when generating the Bill of Lading!

If you have more ideas about how to improve our software, you can submit a ticket via the helpdesk or contact us.