Dynamic Ship Configuration Best Practices

Introduction and Agenda

So a little bit about me. My name is Laurie Ouellette. I’m a product consultant with Insight Works, and I’ve been with Insight Works for approximately five years. I assist Business Central partners and clients with the implementation and training of Dynamic Ship and the Order Fulfillment Worksheet.

I’m here to help you identify some of the Dynamic Ship configuration challenges and solutions that I’ve encountered in my years of implementing Dynamic Ship. We’ll talk about some of the gotchas and some of the more obscure settings that we really like you to consider before implementing.

What we’re going to talk about today includes Business Central essentials, what you need to install in Business Central, configuring Dynamic Ship, customer options, and finally freight price rules to ensure freight is being marked up correctly.

Business Central Essentials

We’re going to start with Business Central essentials. I’ll go over everything conceptually first, and then we’ll hop into Business Central to walk through it.

We’ll talk about license plate management, user permissions, freight integration providers and carriers, and external rate entry, including its advantages and setup.

License Plate Management

License plate management must be installed for Dynamic Ship. The capability is included with Dynamic Ship, but a subscription is required if it’s used outside of Dynamic Ship, such as with Warehouse Insight.

One common issue I see during implementations or support calls is customers having trouble posting warehouse shipments or not seeing posted license plates. If license plate management isn’t installed, posted documents won’t appear in the license plate list, even though shipments were posted.

Users and Permissions

Just like a standard Business Central implementation, you need to define who your users and administrators are. The same applies to Dynamic Ship.

For administrators, I recommend assigning the DHIP Admin permission set, along with DHIP User and iWorks Common. These users handle setup, configuration, and customer options. For standard Dynamic Ship users, DHIP User and iWorks Common are required.

Freight Integration Providers

Dynamic Ship supports multiple freight integration providers at the same time. Many customers use EasyPost alongside LTL providers.

When setting up address validation countries, it’s best to leave the country code blank and specify only the integration provider. This ensures address validation runs for all countries, including occasional international shipments.

External Rate Entry

External rate entry allows for manual entry of tracking and freight details. To enable it, the API key must be set to “externalcarrier” in all lowercase.

This feature is useful for scenarios like collect shipments, customer-booked freight, or company-owned delivery trucks. It mimics getting a carrier label so that all shipment and tracking information flows back to the sales order.

Carriers and Services Setup

Carrier account IDs must come from the EasyPost platform, not directly from UPS or FedEx. Customers should set up their carriers in EasyPost first, then provide those account IDs for Business Central.

When adding a carrier, you must also add its services. The service value must exactly match what EasyPost expects. You can name the code anything you like, but the service description must align with EasyPost’s definitions.

For external carriers or in-house logistics, create a shipping agent and service, link it to the external freight integration provider, and use a unique account ID. This enables tracking and freight cost entry without generating a carrier label.

Configuring Dynamic Ship

Next, we move into configuring Dynamic Ship. We’ll review weights and dimensions, labeling and posting, freight setup, address management, customs, and email tracking.

Weights and Dimensions

Dynamic Ship can calculate package weight if item data is populated correctly. This requires either item unit of measure data with dimensions and weight, or gross and net weight on the item card.

I recommend setting weight calculation for both freight quoting and packing. This provides a close estimate and helps shippers validate weights against a scale.

Labeling and Posting

Dynamic Ship can post just the shipment, or both the shipment and the sales invoice. Options include ship and print, ship print and invoice, or printing both documents.

These settings can be defined globally or overridden per customer, which we’ll discuss later.

Freight Setup

Setting the domestic country code is important to distinguish between domestic and international shipments. Freight billing behavior should typically be set to update, not create new lines.

You can post freight using a resource or a G/L account. Adding the last five characters of the tracking number to the freight description helps accounting teams reconcile carrier invoices.

Customs and International Shipping

Dynamic Ship can automatically populate customs information if item cards include weight, value, country of origin, and tariff code.

Using order line amount as the customs value source ensures duties and taxes are calculated on discounted values when applicable.

Email Tracking

Business Central email accounts must be set up before enabling Dynamic Ship email notifications. Emails can trigger after label creation or after posting.

Templates are HTML-based and support parameters for order details, carrier, and tracking information. Multiple recipients can be added using commas or semicolons.

Dynamic Ship Customer Options

Customer options allow for customer-specific behavior. Dynamic Ship checks this table first when populating sales orders and package worksheets.

Package Option Templates

Package option templates define payment types, such as third party billing. Most scenarios use third party, which requires account number, postal code, state or province, and country.

The “use as default for” setting determines whether the template applies by customer, carrier, ship-to code, or a combination.

Order Post Behavior and Overrides

Order post behavior can be overridden per customer, allowing some customers to post shipment only and others to post shipment and invoice together.

Customer contact override controls which contact information is used for notifications and address validation.

Freight Price Rules

Freight price rules determine how freight charges are marked up or discounted. There is a hierarchy: customer-specific rules, customer price group rules, all-customer rules, and campaigns.

A standard all-customer freight price rule is required. Campaigns can be used for promotions like free freight.

You can choose to not add freight at all, or show the freight charge with a 100% discount so customers see their savings.

Closing Remarks

That covers the main configuration areas and common gotchas I’ve encountered while implementing Dynamic Ship over the years.

If you have any questions or concerns, please don’t hesitate to reach out to our support team. We’re always here to help. Thank you for joining, and I hope you enjoyed the session.

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