Understanding what the merchant fulfilment ID is, how to change it in the Penny Black apps and what you should set it to
What is the "Merchant Fulfilment ID"?
When your WMS makes API calls to Penny Black they need to specify which merchant they are printing for. The API key belongs to a warehouse, not a merchant, and the warehouse may have many merchants they can print for.
Therefore, you must provide a name or identifier, called the Merchant Fulfilment ID to tell us which merchant the API requests are for. This applies to all WMS or printing integrations.
Where can I manage it?
This depends on whether you are a merchant on our scale plan or a 3PL.
Scale plan merchants
For merchants on our Scale plan, you can control your fulfilment ID via the Settings page of the Penny Black merchant app, at the top of the Print & Scan tab:
3PLs
If you are a 3PL and fulfilling on behalf of multiple merchants then you can manage the fulfilment IDs for each of them within the 3PL app.
Go to the Merchants page, Edit the merchant from the button on the right of the row, then you will find the Fulfilment ID on the top right of the edit page:
What should it be set to?
For a print API call to succeed you need both sides to agree on the merchant fulfilment ID. It therefore needs to match whatever your WMS integration is using.
If using our Chrome extension and a single-merchant system such as BrightPearl or Royal Mail Click & Drop then you configure the extension which merchant fulfilment ID to use. In this case, you can use the default Fulfilment ID generated by Penny Black in the above settings and enter it:
However, if you're using multi-merchant WMS, a bespoke integration, or you are limited on what can be provided in your WMS integration then you may need to set the Merchant Fulfilment ID within the Penny Black apps to what the WMS sends.
This is the case for Linnworks and Mintsoft, where the Chrome extension uses the merchant name as displayed on the pick and pack pages, and this must be entered into the app configuration.
For example, Mintsoft has its own identifiers for "Clients" which the Chrome extension looks for on the page and uses in its API requests. In the example below you would enter Merchant Name Here into your Penny Black app settings, and you'll need to repeat the process with the name for each merchant you use Penny Black with.
