This is an Add-on feature. It can be enabled by your MachShip Owner. If you're unsure who this is, please contact our Support team for help and we'll point you in the right direction.

How Journeys work

A journey is used when freight needs to travel via multiple carriers. In MachShip this is facilitated by adding a depot between the pickup and delivery locations. Each stage of the journey (pickup → depot, depot → delivery) becomes a leg, and each leg is a consignment created when the journey is created.

You manage journeys from the Journeys grid, which lists your journeys. Opening a journey shows the consignments (legs) that were created with it.

For users to access this feature, make sure the permission set is enabled for the user role. For Journeys this permission is called Multi-Carrier Journeys and sits within the Consignments permission set.

Before you start

• Depots: you will need at least one depot set up, as journeys route freight via a depot. 
  
• How to Create a Depot
  
• How to Deliver to a Depot
• How to Enable Delivery To Depot for Consignments
• Permissions: to create journeys the user needs the Multi-Carrier Journeys access  under the Consignments permission set.

Creating a Journey

1. Go to Create / Manage → Create Journey.
2. There's explanatory text at the top of the page describing how to use it — you can minimise this.
3. Fill in the same details as the Create Consignment page:
   • a pickup location,
   • a delivery location,
   • the item details being shipped, and
   • any references.
4. Scroll to the Journey planner section at the bottom. It will already be populated with the pickup and delivery locations from above, and will include a clear call to action to select a depot.
5. Select your depot — you can filter the list of depots by suburb. (In the demo, the Sydney depot is selected for a Melbourne → Queensland journey.)

Adding more legs

To add additional legs, hover where you want the leg to go and click the plus (+) button.

Creating routes for each leg

1. For the first leg (pickup → depot), select a carrier/route
2. Repeat for the second leg (and any further legs).
3. Once every leg is routed, you can see the total cost of the journey and the ETA.
4. Click Create the Journey.

When the Journey is created, it starts as unmanifested. Opening it shows Leg 1 and Leg 2 — the consignments created with the journey — each with its dispatch date and ETA.

Manifesting a Journey

Once the journey is created you can manifest its consignments:

• Manually from the Journeys grid — select the cog, then Manifest Consignment; or
• From the Unmanifested Consignments grid, where the journey's two consignments appear with the journey they're linked to shown.

From the Unmanifested Consignments grid you can Manifest All as normal.

The "Manifest all journey legs" company setting

A journey-specific setting controls how Manifest All behaves. Find it under Admin → Companies → Edit Company: Manifest all journey legs.

• Yes: all consignments in the journey are manifested when you select Manifest All.
• No: only the first consignment is manifested. This lets you wait until the first consignment has been delivered before manually triggering manifesting of the next one.

Tracking a Journey

Once the journey is manifested, a tracking page is generated for the journey. It shows the journey details and the details of the carriers participating in the journey.

Because each leg is a consignment, the tracking status of those consignments rolls up into the journey: as each leg progresses, the journey's overall status and leg progress update to match. For example, when the first consignment is completed, the journey status is In transit and when every leg's consignment is complete, the journey is complete.

Good to know

• Journeys are for freight moving via multiple carriers, routed through one or more depots.
• Each leg is a consignment, created automatically when the journey is created.
• Leg 2's dispatch date defaults to Leg 1's ETA + 1 business day (and so on for further legs).
• The Manifest all journey legs company setting lets you choose between manifesting every leg at once (Yes) or only the first leg and manually manifesting the rest (No).
• Tracking is consolidated across all carriers on the journey, so you get a single view of progress leg by leg.