Multi-Carrier Shipping

Every order into ShipStation.
Every shipment back out.

ShipStation is your multi-carrier shipping layer. Supply Lens gets orders there from wherever they originate — ERP, Shopify, marketplace, EDI — with the right weight, dimension, and cost data so your ShipStation automation rules select the correct carrier and service automatically. Shipments, tracking, and costs come back without anyone lifting a finger.

ShipStation connects to
ShipStation data flows Supply Lens integration layer
Orders in — from any source
Shopify / ERP / Marketplace any source
ShipStation
Weight · dimensions · value data passed
Automation rules fire
Shipments back — automatically
Carrier · service · tracking shipment
ERP / Storefront / Customer
Shipping cost cost
ERP / Finance
Carriers Royal Mail DPD Evri UPS FedEx DHL + more
The two flows in detail

Orders in. Shipments out.
Everything in between automated.

ShipStation's job is to select the right carrier and get the parcel moving. Supply Lens's job is to make sure every order arrives in ShipStation with everything ShipStation needs to do that job without human input.

Orders in
Any source → ShipStation

ShipStation needs orders to ship. Supply Lens sends them from wherever they originate — Shopify, an ERP like Unleashed or Enterpryze, a marketplace like eBay or Amazon, an EDI trading partner, or any other connected system. Each order is transformed into the format ShipStation expects: delivery address, product lines, quantities, and critically, the item-level data that ShipStation's automation rules depend on.

This is not a simple order pass-through. The right information has to travel with the order. If ShipStation's automation rules are to fire correctly — selecting the right carrier, the right service, the right label format — they need the right inputs. Supply Lens ensures that every order arrives with the weight, dimensions, declared value, and any custom field data that your rules are built around. An order that arrives without those fields won't route correctly regardless of how well your rules are written.

Shopify orders ERP sales orders Marketplace orders EDI orders Weight & dimensions passed Declared value Custom field mapping SKU cross-reference
Shopify / ERP / Marketplace
Supply Lens (transform + enrich)
ShipStation order
Shipments back out
ShipStation → everywhere

When ShipStation creates a shipment — carrier selected, label printed, consignment created — Supply Lens picks up the shipment event and distributes it to every system that needs to know about it. The ERP sales order is marked as dispatched. The Shopify fulfilment is created with the carrier name and tracking number. The customer notification fires. Where the order originated from a marketplace, the fulfilment is confirmed back to that channel.

Shipping cost is also returned. When ShipStation confirms the actual cost charged by the carrier for a shipment, Supply Lens passes that cost back to your ERP or finance system. This means your sales margins and shipping cost analysis reflect what was actually charged — not an estimate — without any manual data entry.

ERP despatch update Shopify fulfilment creation Tracking to customer Marketplace fulfilment confirm Actual shipping cost returned Carrier & service recorded Partial shipments handled
ShipStation shipment
Supply Lens (distribute)
ERP + Shopify + Channels + Finance
ShipStation automation rules

Your rules do the carrier selection.
Supply Lens makes sure they fire.

ShipStation's automation rules engine can select carrier, service, packaging, and label format based on order data — weight, value, destination, product type, channel, or any custom field you define. Those rules only work if the order arrives with the data they depend on. Supply Lens ensures every order carries the fields your rules expect, so the right carrier is selected automatically every time.

Example automation rules
Condition → Carrier / Service selected
Weight
Under 2 kg · UK
Selected
Royal Mail 48
Weight + Service
2–10 kg · next day
Selected
DPD Next Day
Destination
International · declared value > £150
Selected
DHL Express
Channel + Weight
B2B channel · pallet orders
Selected
Pallet courier
Product type
Fragile flag set
Selected
UPS Fragile handling

Rules are configured and maintained in ShipStation. Supply Lens ensures the order data that drives them — weight, dimensions, value, channel, flags — is always present and correctly populated.

Data Supply Lens passes to ShipStation
Item weight & dimensions
Per-line item weight and dimensions sourced from your ERP or product data. Aggregated to order level or passed per line depending on your ShipStation configuration.
Declared value
Order value passed through correctly so rules based on insured or declared value thresholds fire as expected — particularly relevant for international shipments.
Source channel & order tags
The originating channel — Shopify DTC, B2B ERP, eBay, Amazon, EDI — is passed as a custom field so channel-specific carrier rules apply. Order tags and flags from the source system are carried through.
Product-level flags
Fragile, hazardous, temperature-controlled, or any other product attribute stored in your ERP can be mapped to a ShipStation custom field and used to drive carrier or service selection for those specific items.
Requested service level
Where an order specifies a shipping method — standard, express, next day — that preference is mapped to a ShipStation service level and passed with the order so the correct tier of rule applies.
Where ShipStation integrations break

The rules don't fire if the
data isn't there.

Most ShipStation integration problems aren't connection problems. They're data problems. The order arrives but the fields that drive your automation rules are empty, wrong, or formatted incorrectly.

Our orders arrive in ShipStation but the weight is always blank, so every order gets manually rated.

Weight has to be sourced from somewhere — your ERP product data, a weight field on the order, or a calculated total from item weights. Supply Lens maps the weight source for your specific setup and ensures it lands in the correct ShipStation field every time. If your products have per-item weights in Unleashed or Enterpryze, those flow through. If weight is stored at order level, that value is passed. The rules fire because the data is there.

We have different carrier rules for DTC and B2B orders but ShipStation can't tell them apart.

The originating channel is passed with every order as a custom field. DTC orders from Shopify and B2B orders from your ERP arrive in ShipStation with a channel identifier attached. Your channel-specific carrier rules then apply correctly — DTC gets the consumer parcel carrier, B2B gets the business carrier. The distinction that ShipStation needs to route correctly is present in the order data from the moment it arrives.

Shipping costs from ShipStation never make it back to our ERP, so our margin reporting is always off.

When ShipStation creates a shipment, it records the actual carrier charge. Supply Lens captures that cost and returns it to your ERP against the relevant sales order or despatch record. Your margin calculation for that order now reflects what you actually paid for shipping — not an estimate, and not a manual entry. Finance reporting and per-order profitability analysis both benefit without any additional work.

We ship from multiple sources — Shopify DTC, our ERP for B2B, and two marketplaces — and ShipStation only sees the Shopify ones.

Supply Lens connects all four sources to ShipStation simultaneously. Each connection applies the correct transformation for that source — Shopify orders formatted one way, ERP sales orders formatted another, marketplace orders handled with their own channel identifiers. ShipStation sees all your orders in one place, the automation rules apply correctly per channel, and all shipment confirmations route back to the right source system.

Getting started

A complete ShipStation integration
in days.

The setup centres on understanding your ShipStation automation rules and making sure the integration sends the data those rules depend on. Once that's mapped, everything else follows.

What we need from you
ShipStation API credentials
API key and secret from your ShipStation account settings
Source system credentials
Shopify, Unleashed, Enterpryze, or whichever systems are sending orders to ShipStation
Your ShipStation automation rules
A summary of the rules you have set up — what conditions they check and what fields they depend on — so we can ensure those fields are populated correctly in every order
Weight and dimension source
Where item weights and dimensions are stored — ERP product record, order field, or a separate lookup — and how they should be passed to ShipStation
Channel identifiers
How different order sources should be identified in ShipStation custom fields, so channel-specific carrier rules apply correctly
Sample orders from each source
To validate that all fields are populated correctly and automation rules fire as expected before go-live
How we get you live
1
Scope
Order sources, automation rules, weight source, and channel identifiers mapped out.
2
Configure
Each order source connected and data enrichment configured so all rule-driving fields are populated.
3
Test
Orders from each source sent through staging. Automation rules validated against real data. Shipments and costs returned and verified.
4
Go live
Production activated. All flows monitored from day one.

If you add new ShipStation automation rules that depend on additional order fields, Supply Lens can be updated to pass those fields without rebuilding the integration.

Ready to connect every order
source to ShipStation?

Orders from any source. Automation rules that fire correctly. Shipments and costs back automatically. 30-day trial available.