Capturing the consignment note against the order

The consignment note number is the courier's reference for a parcel. It appears on the label, in the tracking system, and on the invoice you receive weeks later.

It is also the only thing that joins a delivery charge to the sale that caused it. Stores that do not capture it against the order end up coding courier invoices to a monthly expense and losing per-order delivery cost permanently.

Why this one field carries so much

Consider what depends on the join being present.

Per-order margin. Delivery is the second largest cost on most Malaysian ecommerce orders. Without attribution, contribution per order is an estimate — see the real margin on a Shopify order.

Per-product margin. Heavy low-value products are where delivery quietly exceeds margin, and identifying them requires cost at order level — see per-product profitability on your own store.

Invoice verification. A courier invoice with a thousand lines can only be checked if each line matches a shipment you made. Otherwise you are approving a total.

Free shipping analysis. Whether the threshold works needs the delivery cost on the orders that qualified.

Claims. A lost or damaged parcel claim needs the consignment note and the order value together — see courier claims for lost and damaged parcels.

Customer service. Where is my parcel is answerable in seconds with the reference and by search without it.

Six things from one field, recorded at the moment the label is printed.

Where it gets lost

Four failure points, all mundane.

Manual label printing. A staff member enters the address into a courier portal, prints the label, and the consignment note exists only on the parcel and in the courier's system. Nothing wrote it back to the order.

Consolidated pickups. Twenty parcels handed over together, tracking numbers assigned in a batch, and nobody records which belongs to which order.

Partial shipments. One order shipped in two parcels means two consignment notes, and a field designed to hold one cannot represent it.

Reshipments and returns. A replacement parcel has its own consignment note, and it belongs to the same order as the original. So does the return leg. An order can accumulate three or four references over its life.

That last point is the design conclusion: an order has many consignments, not one. A single field on the order is not enough, and modelling it as one is why reshipments and returns end up uncosted.

What to record

For each consignment, at the point of dispatch.

The consignment note number and the courier who issued it.

Which order, and which items in it. Necessary for partial shipments.

Type — original despatch, reshipment, or return.

Origin location, for stores shipping from more than one place — see fulfilling online orders from your shop.

Declared weight and dimensions, which is what you told the courier. Keeping it makes weight disputes checkable rather than arguable — see weight discrepancies and who pays for them.

Expected cost, from your rate card. The comparison against the invoiced amount is what catches billing errors.

Six fields, captured automatically where the label is generated from the order and manually where it is not.

Getting it automatic

The only reliable answer is that the label is created from the order rather than typed into a portal.

Where a courier integration exists, the flow is: the order is ready, a shipment is created through the courier's system, the consignment note comes back in the response, and it is stored against the order before the label prints. Nobody types anything and nothing depends on somebody remembering — see what a courier API actually gives you.

Where no integration exists — a smaller courier, or a manual arrangement — the fallback is a scan step. Scan the label barcode against the order before the parcel leaves. Less elegant, and it takes seconds and it works.

What does not work is a spreadsheet filled in at the end of the day from memory and a pile of receipts. It is incomplete within a week.

Shopify's fulfilment record holds tracking numbers, which means the field has a natural home if the fulfilment is created properly rather than marked complete without one — see what APIs you need for Shopify reconciliation.

What it enables at month end

With consignment notes against orders, the courier invoice becomes a reconciliation rather than an approval.

Each invoice line matches a consignment you recorded. Invoiced amounts compare against expected amounts. Differences are surcharges, weight corrections or billing errors, each identifiable and each attributable to the order that caused it — see courier invoices and how to reconcile them.

Without it, the invoice total is coded to delivery expense and the only available check is whether it feels about right. That is how overbilling persists for years: not because anyone accepted it, but because nobody was in a position to notice.

Common questions

Why does the consignment note number matter for accounting?

Because it is the only thing joining a delivery charge to the sale that caused it. Without it recorded against the order, courier invoices can only be coded as a monthly lump, so per-order and per-product margin become estimates, invoice lines cannot be verified, free shipping analysis is impossible and claims are harder to file.

Should an order have one consignment note or several?

Several. A partial shipment creates two, a reshipment adds another, and a return leg adds one more, so an order can accumulate three or four references over its life. Modelling it as a single field on the order is why reshipments and returns commonly end up with no cost attached to them.

How do you capture consignment notes reliably?

By generating the label from the order rather than typing the address into a courier portal, so the reference comes back from the courier's system and is stored against the order automatically. Where no integration exists, scanning the label barcode against the order before dispatch takes seconds and works. A spreadsheet completed from memory is incomplete within a week.

What should be recorded alongside the consignment note?

The courier, which order and which items it covers, whether it is an original despatch, reshipment or return, the origin location, the declared weight and dimensions, and the expected cost from your rate card. The declared weight makes later disputes checkable, and the expected cost is what surfaces billing errors.

Related: courier invoices and how to reconcile them · what a courier API actually gives you · shipping revenue versus shipping cost