New International Letter-boxable services have been added Pro Shipping. These can be used for sending single-package shipments to international destinations.

The Tracking Webhook has been updated to support basic authentication (username and password) as well as the existing Oauth2 authentication type.

Users can select the required authentication type in the Tracking Webhook configuration screen, and then add the relevant credentials for the selected authentication type.

These credentials will then be used by the endpoint to authenticate Tracking Webhook API calls. See the Get Started page and Tracking Webhook section for more information on how to configure the Tracking Webhook.

Pro Shipping will now be receiving a daily Unmatched Barcodes file listing any tracking numbers that have been received in the Royal Mail network but not have been closed out.

The system will then automatically closeout out these shipments and send the required pre-advice and OBA billing data to Royal Mail back-end systems.

The maximum length of the address fields in the Create Shipment request has been increased from 35 characters to 40 characters. This has been updated in the Shipper Address, Destination Address and Return to Sender Address objects.

For more information, see the API Reference page and the Royal Mail API section.

A new API has been added to allow a Royal Mail tracking number to be requested before creating a shipment.

This API will pre-allocate a tracking number without generating a shipment or label. The tracking number can then be used in the Create Shipment request to create a shipment using the same service and destination associated with the pre-allocated tracking number.

For more information, see the API Reference page and the Royal Mail API section.

Back-end updates, performance enhancements and minor UI improvements

The Hurricane services Item Verification, Prohibited Items and Denied Parties checks can now be configured to run as part of the shipment creation process. For these checks to run, Hurricane services will first need to be enabled on the customer’s account. The customer will then need to enable each check individually in the Hurricane integration screen. Once a Hurricane service has been enabled, Sapient will automatically run that data check each time a dutiable international shipment is created.

If the Hurricane Item Verification check is enabled, then customers can view details of the HS Code and Item Description changes made by Hurricane from the Shipment Processing screen and choose whether to accept or reject the changes. If the customer chooses to revert to the original values, they can re-print customs documents to ensure this contains the correct data.

Note: The Hurricane data checks can also be completed outside of the shipment creation process by calling the Hurricane Services APIs – see the API Reference section for more details.

When an EORI number is provided in either the createShipment request or Customs Settings UI, Pro Shipping will validate that the number is in a valid format and return an error if the EORI number is not valid.

A new API has been added to allow customers who are using barcoding (generating labels outside of Pro Shipping) to request a barcode number range. This API will obtain a barcode range for the requested service, and return this range in the API response for the customer to store in their labelling system. For more information, see the API Reference page and the Royal Mail API section.

The following updates have been made to the services and service enhancements available in the system, in accordance with the latest specifications:

• The maximum weight of the Tracked Returns 24 and 48 services has been changed from 30kg to 20 kg.
• The Special Delivery Uncommon Services LA1-LA6 have been removed, as they have been withdrawn.
• The Consequential Loss service enhancements have been added. For more information on the available service enhancements, see the API Reference page, Royal Mail API section and the createShipment API schema carrierSpecifics element.