Practical example: DHL Shipping (Versenden)

First, you have to establish a basis in order to successfully work with DHL in the future. It is required that you download the DHL Shipping plugin  from the plentyMarketplace.

The plugin is free of charge and can be purchased by clicking on Go to checkout. Please follow further instructions in the plentyMarketplace.

After you have purchased the plugin, you have to install it in your plentymarkets system. After the purchase, you will find the plugin in the Plugins » Plugin overview menu. For the display of newly purchased plugins, activate the filter Not installed and confirm the search (). There you have to install the plugin by clicking the button Install plugin ().

As soon as the plugin is installed, you have to deploy it in your plugin set in order to set it up later on. To do so, the following steps are necessary:

You will find the plugin in the list in the Plugin » Plugin overview menu.

Click on the globe () of the plugin (Not active) to activate the plugin. If you made changes to the plugin, you have to deploy the plugin set for the system. This is done by clicking on Save & deploy plugin set (). This process may take a little while:

If an error should occur during or after the deploy process, an info button is displayed. Click to see the log entry which indicates an error or an error source. If the deploy process was successfully completed, the button will not be displayed.

How you set up the plugin is described in detail in another chapter.

But before you configure the DHL Shipping plugin, you have to carry out some settings in the plentymarkets back end.

In the Base tab, you determine the basic settings for your shipping profile.

The table of shipping charges tab is only available after you have saved the shipping profile. In this tab, the tables of shipping charges for the created regions are displayed. This means that you determine the prices and the calculation types for the individual regions. Select the calculation basis for the shipping costs. The following options are available: Flat rate, Weight-dependent, Volume-dependent, Quantity-dependent, Price-dependent and Item shipping charge.

Depending on the type settings, you have to enter the correct prices. Furthermore, you can save for each table of shipping charges the amount from which shipping is free of charge, for example. Or you choose that shipping only costs EUR 2.50 instead of EUR 4.99 when the value of items ordered is EUR 100 at least.

The limitation type limits the shipping profile. Pay attention that you allow for a seamless transition with your shipping profiles. For example: You have set the maximum weight of 20 kg in one shipping profile. Your customer puts two items with a weight of 11 kg each in the shopping cart. Therefore, another shipping profile should be selectable. In this way, an error message in the online store will be avoided.

You can save a pre-defined shipping package as standard package. A shipping package can be defined in the Setup » Orders » Shipping » Shipping packages menu. In this way, you can transfer fixed dimensions when you only use one package size for the shipment.

Afterwards, you switch to the Setup » Orders » Shipping » DHLShipping menu where you will find the following sub-menus.

Basic settings

In the basic settings, you enter the access data that you have saved for the DHL user. Furthermore, you also have the possibility to save an alternative telephone number and email address. If one of these fields is filled, only this data will be transferred to DHL and not the customer’s data anymore. The setting in the shipping profile regarding Transfer email and telephone will not be taken into consideration in the plugin. Last, you can find the checkbox for the non-codable addresses here. If the checkmark is placed, DHL will also accept non-codable shipping orders. However, this may lead to additional costs at DHL. Please contact your DHL contact person for further information.

Billling numbers

You receive from DHL an individual billing number for each of your booked services (e.g. DHL Paket National). This number has 14 characters and is divided in 10, 2 and 2. The first 10 characters are the EKP and are identical for each service. The following 2 characters stand for the service (e.g. 01 for DHL Paket National). The last 2 characters have to be entered in the field Subscription.

Shipper data

In the area of the shipper data, you enter the data which should be printed as shipper address on the DHL label.

Shipping settings

At last, we carry out the most important step: setting the shipping settings. In the shipping settings, all settings are combined. Here, you select which shipping profile is to "work" with which shipping region and which billing number in the future. It is important that you save an individual setting for each profile and each region in this profile. Depending on which services you have booked at DHL, you can save them in this configuration. An example of this would be the service "cash on delivery". The field Minium package weight for transmission to DHL (in grams) can be used to increase the weight of the items for the registration. It is necessary, however, that a weight is saved for the items. The last point in the shipping settings relates to foreign deliveries. For deliveries to foreign countries, the postage for export shipping as well as the type of shipment are mandatory fields.

Once you have carried out these settings step by step, you can successfully register your orders with the DHL Shipping plugin via a process and the procedure Shipping centre or via the Orders » Shipping centre menu. If nevertheless an error should occur, you will find in the lower part of this page some possible error sources and possible solutions. Errors may be caused due to incorrect address data at the order, for example.

After you have downloaded an update of the plugin, it is necessary that you deploy the plugin set once again. Downloading the update does not lead to the fact that new features or changes are also active in the new version.