Inform warehouse systems of the ideal ship-out date
Useplanned_ship_date and estimated_transit_days together to schedule warehouse tasks and enforce fulfillment cutoffs.
Knowing a predicted delivery date is only useful if your warehouse knows the latest date an order can be picked, packed, and handed to the carrier to achieve it. The Estimate API’s planned_ship_date is the ship-out date you are committing to, and estimated_transit_days tells you the transit window from that date. Together they enable automated warehouse task creation, pick queue prioritization, and same-day cutoff enforcement.
How it works
When you callPOST /v2/estimates, pass the planned_ship_date that reflects your intended handoff to the carrier — typically today’s date at the warehouse’s daily carrier pickup or drop-off cutoff time. The response echoes planned_ship_date back in UTC and returns estimated_transit_days on each prediction, so you can calculate and display the full fulfillment timeline.
For warehouse scheduling, planned_ship_date is the ship-by target. Your system must create and complete the pick/pack task before that datetime.
Request
Pass the warehouse cutoff time as theplanned_ship_date. In this example, the warehouse closes carrier handoffs at 3:00 PM PDT (22:00 UTC).
Response
Push tasks to your warehouse system
Once the customer selects a service level at checkout, extractplanned_ship_date and estimated_transit_days from the matching prediction and send them downstream to your warehouse management system (WMS) or fulfillment queue.
Enforce carrier cutoff times
Theplanned_ship_date you pass into the request defines the cutoff. If an order is placed after your warehouse’s daily carrier handoff time, bump planned_ship_date to the next day’s cutoff (skip days your warehouse is closed) and re-call the endpoint — the delivery date predictions will update accordingly.