# Create Sales Order Shipment

`POST /accounting/sales-order-shipments`

Group: Accounting › Sales Order Shipments · Operation ID: `createSalesOrderShipment`

Ships an approved sales order to its customer and returns the id of the new shipment. The shipment is drafted in inventory, and this record mirrors it. The lines come from the order's inventory products and cannot be supplied here.

Ships an approved sales order to its customer and returns only the created shipment's id. Read the shipment number and inventoryShipmentId with GET accounting/sales-order-shipments/:id.

Inventory owns the shipment. The call drafts the real shipment in inventory and moves stock, and the record this endpoint returns is the accounting-side mirror, linked by inventoryShipmentId. A shipment cannot be created in accounting alone. The new shipment starts at 'pendingShipment' with every line at shippedQty 0, and inventory fills the quantities in when it commits the shipment.

The lines come from the sales order's inventory products and their items and cannot be supplied here. The logistics fields carrier, trackingId, incoterm, warehouseId, shipToContactEmail, customerRequestDate and deliveryDate are accounting-side detail and can also be set later through PATCH.

Beyond SALES_ORDER_NOT_FOUND and WAREHOUSE_NOT_FOUND, the call is rejected with a localized message when the sales order is not approved, has no inventory products or no inventory product items, or when no inventory implementation is registered.

[Open in the interactive reference](https://docs.api.lensing.ai/?op=createSalesOrderShipment)

## Parameters

| Name | In | Type | Required | Description |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| `Api-Version` | header | `"v1"` | yes | The API version this request targets, named by its public identifier. Required on every request; omitting it, or naming a version this company does not have, is answered with 400. This document describes version `v1`. |
| `Idempotency-Key` | header | string | no | An opaque caller-chosen string (1-255 characters) that makes this request safe to retry. Repeating the same key with an identical request body replays the original response instead of re-executing - but only once that original request succeeded; a failed attempt re-executes on retry. Repeating the key with a different body is answered with 422. A key still in flight is answered with 409 - as is a key whose original request was interrupted before it finished, for a few minutes afterwards, until that attempt is presumed dead. A completed response stays replayable for 24 hours. The key is scoped to the caller, not to the action: reusing it for a different action is answered with 409 or 422 rather than treated independently. On read actions this header is ignored. On write actions that cannot offer the guarantee it is answered with `400 IDEMPOTENCY_NOT_SUPPORTED` rather than silently ignored. |

## Request body

Required, `application/json`: createSalesOrderShipmentInput.

| Field | Type | Required | Description |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| `salesOrderId` | string | yes | The approved sales order to ship. Its inventory products and their items define what goes on the shipment. See id on GET accounting/sales-orders/:id. |
| `trackingId` | string | no | The carrier tracking number or tracking URL to record on the shipment. Omit to leave it unset. |
| `carrier` | string | no | The name of the carrier handling the shipment. Omit to leave it unset. |
| `incoterm` | string | no | The incoterm governing shipping responsibility. For example 'DAP' or 'EXW'. Omit to leave it unset. |
| `warehouseId` | string | no | The warehouse location the shipment is dispatched from. Omit to leave it unset. See id on GET inventory/warehouses/:id. |
| `shipToContactEmail` | string | no | The email of the contact who receives this shipment. Omit to leave it unset. |
| `customerRequestDate` | string (date) | no | The date the customer asked for delivery. Use format YYYY-MM-DD. Omit to leave it unset. |
| `deliveryDate` | string (date) | no | The date the shipment is expected to be delivered. Use format YYYY-MM-DD. Omit to leave it unset. |

Example:

```json
{
  "salesOrderId": "9c2a6a10-7d34-4c8e-9b21-5a0f3e6d81b7",
  "trackingId": "3fa85f64-5717-4562-b3fc-2c963f66afa6",
  "carrier": "DHL",
  "incoterm": "DAP",
  "warehouseId": "3fa85f64-5717-4562-b3fc-2c963f66afa6",
  "shipToContactEmail": "<shipToContactEmail>",
  "customerRequestDate": "2026-01-15",
  "deliveryDate": "2026-01-15"
}
```

## Response

`200` Success

Under `data` (createSalesOrderShipmentOutput):

| Field | Type | Required | Description |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| `id` | string | yes | The unique identifier for the created sales order shipment. |

## Response headers

- `Idempotency-Replayed` — Present and `true` only when this response replays a previously stored one for the same Idempotency-Key, rather than reflecting a live execution. Absent on a live response - never sent as `false`.

## Errors

| Code | Status |
| --- | --- |
| `SALES_ORDER_NOT_FOUND` | 400 |
| `WAREHOUSE_NOT_FOUND` | 400 |
| `IDEMPOTENCY_KEY_CONFLICT` | 409 |
| `IDEMPOTENCY_PAYLOAD_MISMATCH` | 422 |

## Statuses

- `400` — Invalid request or business failure. Codes: SALES_ORDER_NOT_FOUND, WAREHOUSE_NOT_FOUND
- `401` — Missing or invalid access token
- `403` — Not authorized
- `404` — Not found
- `409` — The Idempotency-Key is still being processed by another request.
- `422` — The Idempotency-Key was already used with a different request payload.
- `429` — Too many requests
- `500` — Internal server error