Completing or deleting a shipment

Shipments have two endings. Most of the time you mark a shipment as Released. Delete is for shipments that shouldn't have existed. The two are not interchangeable, and picking the right one keeps your records clean.

Before you start

• You need Shipments edit permission for either action.
• Deletes cannot be undone, so read this article fully before using Delete on a shipment with vehicles or costs attached.

Marking a shipment as Released

Use Update status, select Released, save. That's it.

What Released does:

• Most edits on the shipment detail page lock.
• Vehicles stay attached. Their cost allocations stay in place.
• The shipment moves off the In progress tab of the Shipments list and into Completed and All.
• Reporting and audit history stay intact.

Use Released for every voyage that has genuinely finished. This is the normal close-out.

Deleting a shipment

Delete shipment in the action bar, confirm, and the record is removed. What that does:

• The shipment itself is gone.
• Every vehicle that was on the shipment has its shipment link dropped. The vehicle records, their own costs, their customers, and their tracking links stay.
• Any cost line items attached to this shipment are removed along with it. Every affected vehicle's allocated shipment cost drops.

Delete is permanent.

When to use which

• Released: the voyage is finished. Vehicles have cleared, the file is complete. This is the normal ending for every real shipment.
• Delete: the shipment shouldn't exist. Duplicate, created in error, or abandoned before any real activity. Not a "close this out" button.

If you're ever unsure, mark it Released. You can always revisit it later. A deleted shipment you want back has to be recreated by hand.

What customers see after you delete

A customer tracking page that drew its ETA and vessel from the deleted shipment falls back to the vehicle's own ETA and vessel fields, if those are set. If neither the shipment nor the vehicle has voyage data, the tracking page hides the voyage schedule rather than showing stale information.