Managing Quotes
Use our Quotes API to retrieve carrier pricing options and manually allocate consignments with a selected quote. Ideal for expedited or exception workflows.
What is a quote?
The Consignments Quotes API enables you to get delivery quotes for a consignment manually. This section explains the various ways in which you can get delivery quotes for a consignment, and how to generate and allocate consignments from a selected quote.
Delivery quotes are generally used outside of a “regular” package allocation workflow, as a means of managing consignments that require manual intervention. For example, your customer service teams might want to get quotes for an expedited delivery on a consignment that was missed by a carrier and so did not meet its delivery promise.
The Quotes API enables you to get delivery quotes for both as-yet uncreated and existing consignments. All Quotes endpoints return one or more Quote objects, of which each represents an offer for carriage of a consignment with a specific carrier service. Each quote can be uniquely identified by a {quoteReference}, which is used when selecting a quote via the Allocate With Quote endpoint.
Allocate with quote
The Allocate With Quote endpoint is a key part of all PRO quotes workflows, enabling you to allocate a consignment to the carrier service returned in a particular quote. It is covered in the Allocation section of this site, as it is part of the Allocation API:
For reference information on Allocate With Quote, see the API reference
For a user guide on the Allocate With Quote endpoint, see the Allocate to a specific quote page, in the Allocation docs section.
Next Steps
- Learn how to get quotes without creating a new consignment at the Get quotes page.
- Learn how to create consignments at the Creating a new consignment page.
- Learn how to allocate consignments to your chosen quote at the Allocate to a specific quote page.