Order data brings your purchase orders (POs) into Portcast, so you can follow shipments the way your business plans them: by order. Every PO your organisation sends to Portcast is linked to the containers and bookings/BLs that carry it. For each order you can see which containers it ships on, what is inside them, when the goods are expected to arrive and whether anything is running late — all based on the tracking data Portcast already maintains for those containers.
This guide covers how order data reaches the platform, how to find and read your orders in the Web App, and how order data shows up on the container pages.
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Order tracking is activated per organisation, and order data is uploaded through the Portcast API only. Availability depends on your commercial agreement with Portcast, and there is no manual upload or editing of order data in the Web App. Order data is currently supported for ocean shipments (containers and bookings/BLs) only. If you would like to activate order tracking for your organisation and set up the integration, reach out to [email protected].
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Your team (or your integration partner) sends each order, with its line items, to the container(s) or booking/BL it ships on, using the Portcast API. Portcast stores the order, links it to the shipment and keeps the order views up to date automatically as the containers are tracked. Re-sending an order replaces what was previously stored for it, so your order data can be kept in sync with your ERP or order-management system.
Order data can be attached at two levels:
An order is made of three kinds of information:
| Level | Standard fields | Where you see them |
|---|---|---|
| Order | PO number, customer/account name and codes, vendor name, order creation date, and an optional declared order total (quantity) | Order list, order page header and the Order Metadata tab |
| Line item (one per SKU) | Product number and description, quantity, cartons, gross and net weight, volume, ship window start and end dates | Line Items tab of the order, and the Order Data tab of each container |
| Custom fields (order or line level) | Anything else your business tracks — internal references, incoterms, department, season, HS codes, colour, size… Custom fields are displayed as they are sent and are never aggregated. | Extra rows in Order Metadata (order level) or extra columns in the line-item tables (line level) |
One order can be spread over several containers and even several bookings, and one container can carry several orders — Portcast consolidates all of it into a single order record.
For the technical details of the ingestion (endpoints, payload format, validation rules), see the Order Data endpoints in our API documentation and the guide Getting Started with Portcast API.
Open Tracking → Order in the left-hand menu. The Order tracking list shows one row per purchase order in your organisation.
The Order tracking list: one row per purchase order, with quick filters, search and expandable rows.
Each row shows: