What's a quote?
A quote is a pricing request with a commitment by the 3PL courier. These quotes will expire eventually, thus they need to be used to create a delivery within 5 minutes. When you request a new quote you will get a batch with multiple quotes from multiple providers, each of those will count on a quotation_id that you can use to create your delivery.
Do I need always to create a quote?
Not really. You can either create a quote to see all options and pick the most suitable or you can use our place an order without quotes endpoint if you want to auto-dispatch the order. You can read more about autodispatch feature here.
What information do I need to start creating quotes?
All you need to start creating quotes is a pick up point and drop off point(s). For each of the delivery points we will require an address, the coordinates of the point and a phone number for contact purposes. Some providers require using local phone numbers, so we recommend using local phone numbers to maximize the number of quotes you receive.
Delivery Types
We currently offer different delivery types the potential values you can set are as follows:
| Type | Delivery Time |
|---|---|
| ASAP | 30-45’ |
| 2h | Within 2h |
| 4h | Within 4h |
| next_day | During the next day |
| 1_3_days | Within the next 3 days |
You can read a more detailed explanation of our Delivery types in here.
pickupStartTime is the earliest time your items are available to be picked up at the sender’s location. In the event that pickupStartTime is null, we will assume the earliest available pickupStartTime time is the same as the order created time.
Can I schedule deliveries?
You will be able to schedule your deliveries 7 days ahead of your desired pickupStartTime. The earliest pickup time for a scheduled order is 60’ from the order placement time. If you want the order to be picked up earlier use ASAP delivery type and leave pickupStartTime empty.
You will be able to schedule your deliveries by defining your pickupStartTime. Your pickupStartTime time is the earliest time when the items are ready for pick up. As a rule of thumb, please refer to the below for a general time range of pick up for each of the delivery types.
If your schedule time will be within an hour we will consider it as non-scheduled.
| Delivery Type | Range of actual pick up time |
|---|---|
| ASAP | Driver will arrive within 15 minutes from pickupStartTime |
| 2H | Driver will arrive within 1 hour from pickupStartTime |
| 4H | Driver will arrive within 2 hours from pickupStartTime |
Can I get quotes for multi-stop deliveries?
Absolutely, you can send multiple drop off points. Each drop off is an object with a set of information (see Drop-off schemas), you can use the sequence parameter to define the way you want the stops to happen or you can leave it blank for Kosmo to automatically set it based in the shortest path.