A distributor's orders already live in one system. Sales enters them in the ERP, the warehouse picks against them, finance invoices from them. Freight is often the one step that leaves that system: someone reads the order, opens a carrier portal or a booking form and types the address again. An ERP freight integration closes that gap, so the order becomes a consignment without being re-keyed, and what happened to the consignment flows back to the order.
This guide is for the operations or IT lead who has been asked to make that happen. It covers what the integration moves, the decisions to settle before anyone scopes it, who builds it, how long it takes, and what to do about a system that is not on anyone's list.
What the Integration Moves
An ERP freight integration carries data in two directions.
Out of the ERP. A sales order, or the part of it that is ready to ship: the delivery address and contact, the items or cartons, their weights and dimensions where the ERP holds them, the requested delivery date, and the references the receiver expects to see. On the freight side this becomes a consignment ready to quote and book.
Back into the ERP. The consignment number, the carrier and service chosen, the despatch date, the ETA and the tracking status. With these written back against the order, sales and customer service answer delivery questions from the ERP, and finance can match a freight charge to an order without asking the warehouse.
Most of the integrations Senditt sets up work this way. NetSuite sales orders come through for quoting and booking, and the shipment data goes back so the ERP stays current. Cin7 orders come through so inventory and freight stay aligned from order to despatch. MYOB and Sage 300 are order syncing, not ledger reconciliation, so the accounting side is untouched.
The Decisions to Make Before Scoping
The integrations team can only scope what you have decided. Three decisions carry most of the weight.
Which orders. Every sales order, or only those with a shipping method set? Only orders at a particular status, such as picked or packed? Distributors with a trade counter often exclude counter sales. Decide the rule in the ERP's own terms, so the integration reads a field that already exists.
Which sites. If you despatch from more than one warehouse, each needs its own pickup details on the consignment. The ERP usually knows the fulfilling location; the integration needs to know how to read it.
Which fields. Weights and dimensions are the usual gap. If the ERP holds them per item, cartonisation still has to happen somewhere. If it holds nothing, the warehouse enters them at booking, and the integration should leave those fields open rather than fill them with a default. Decide too what the receiver's reference should be and which contact the driver should see.
Write these down before the first scoping call. The call goes faster and the build matches the business.
Who Does the Work
On Senditt, the integrations team scopes and sets up each integration for you, and there is no self-setup. There is no plugin to download and configure on your own, because each build is customised to the ERP's version, the fields in use and the order rules above, and it is tested before it goes live.
What that means in practice depends on the platform. Some are supported builds the team has done many times, such as NetSuite, Cin7, Fishbowl and MYOB. Some are custom builds, scoped and quoted against your configuration, which is how SAP, Pronto, Infor M3 and Sage 300 are handled. Some connect through a third party's extension: Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central connects through a third-party app in the Microsoft marketplace, while Finance and Operations is a custom build. The integrations page lists each platform and which of these it is.
Your side of the work is access and answers: a test environment or sandbox where one exists, a user with the permissions the connection needs, and someone who can say yes or no to the field mapping quickly.
How Long It Takes
Integrations with your eCommerce, ERP or WMS take two to four weeks, depending on the platform. Custom builds sit at the longer end; supported platforms with a clean order structure sit at the shorter end.
Booking does not wait for the integration. You can book the same day: carrier rates are already loaded, so a new account can book and send on day one, through the Create Consignment form while the connection is built.
Worked Example: A Distributor's First Month
Take a hypothetical distributor of plumbing supplies running NetSuite, despatching from a warehouse in Melbourne's north and a second in Adelaide.
Week one. The account is opened and the despatch teams start booking through the Create Consignment form, entering the despatch date and time, then the pickup panel with the warehouse's own details and the delivery panel with the customer's. The consignments land in one list with their service, despatch date, ETA and status. The operations lead sends the integrations team the three decisions. Orders at the status Ready to Ship with a freight shipping method are the ones that flow; the fulfilling location field decides the pickup site; item weights come from NetSuite and dimensions are entered at booking.
Weeks two and three. The team builds and tests against the sandbox. A few orders show a delivery contact in a notes field rather than the contact field, and the mapping is adjusted. The Adelaide warehouse's pickup window differs from Melbourne's, so the despatch time defaults per site.
Week four. The connection goes live. Orders at Ready to Ship appear as consignments without anyone typing an address. Consignment numbers, carrier, service and status write back to the NetSuite order. Customer service answers delivery questions from the order screen. The despatch teams, who booked by hand for three weeks, now check and confirm rather than type.
Nothing about the example needed a freight process the business did not already have. It needed the three decisions made early.
Systems That Are Not on the List
Senditt connects 21 eCommerce, ERP and WMS platforms. For anything else there is an open API and a flat-file option.
The open API suits a business with developers or an integration partner. API tokens are created and managed from a settings page inside the platform, and your system creates consignments and reads their status directly.
The flat file suits a business whose ERP can export orders as a file on a schedule, with nobody available to build against an API. It is the plainer route, and it reaches systems no vendor will connect.
Either way, the same three decisions come first, which orders, which sites and which fields.
If your ERP holds the order and your freight still starts with someone typing an address, book a freight review and we will map Senditt to the systems you already run. There is no lock-in on standard accounts. Fixed terms apply only where you agree to one. The integrations page lists every platform and how each one connects.
Senditt is a managed freight platform (4PL). Senditt is not Sendle and is not affiliated with it.