Basic Entities
Orders, Shipments and Tours are the three objects at the heart of Orbit: the commercial booking, the individual cargo move, and the plan that drives it. Almost everything you do in Orbit MissionControl builds on these three.
Orbit keeps two sides of every job separate — the commercial side (what a customer booked and pays) and the operational side (who drives it and how) — and joins them through a single cargo move. Three objects carry that structure: the Order, the Shipment and the Tour. This article is a short introduction to each; follow the links for the full picture.
Order
An Order is the commercial record of a customer's booking. It groups one or more Shipments and carries the customer-side details — who booked, who is billed, the line items and the price. Its status updates on its own as its shipments progress; you confirm and cancel orders, but never set the status by hand.
Read more in the Orders article.
Shipment
A Shipment is a single cargo move: one pickup and one dropoff for a defined load. It is the link between the commercial Order and the operational Tour — you plan a shipment onto a tour to get it moving, and the carrier attaches to that tour. A shipment waiting to be planned is Unrouted, which is perfectly normal.
Most shipments are carried straight through: one vehicle collects the load and drives it to its destination. Where that is not possible, a shipment is carried in stages called Legs, and each stage is planned onto its own tour. If your organisation carries every shipment directly, legs stay in the background and there is nothing about them to learn.
Read more in the Shipments article.
Tour
A Tour is the operational plan: an ordered list of stops, driven by one carrier with a driver and vehicle, carrying one or more shipments. It is the only thing a carrier attaches to, and you review a finished tour to complete it. Cancelling a tour never deletes it — its shipments simply become available to plan again.
Read more in the Tours article.
How they fit together
An Order groups Shipments; each Shipment is planned onto a Tour; and there is no direct link from an order to a tour — the shipment is the bridge between them. As a tour is driven, its shipments progress automatically, and each shipment's Order keeps up on its own.
Where a shipment is carried in stages, the bridge is the stage rather than the whole shipment: each Leg sits on its own tour, so one shipment can be on several tours at once, with different carriers on different days. The order still sees one shipment, and your customer still sees one delivery.
Where to go next
Orders — the commercial booking, its statuses and the actions you take.
Shipments — the cargo move, planning it onto a tour, and its statuses.
Tours — the operational plan, running it and reviewing it to complete.
Legs: How a Shipment Is Carried — what happens when one vehicle cannot do the whole job.
Understanding the Order, Shipment & Tour relationship — how the two sides join through the shipment.
Order, Shipment, Tour & Leg Statuses — how statuses update as you work.
Frequently asked questions
Which object holds the price the customer pays?
The Order. The carrier's own rate lives on the Tour; the two are kept separate.
Does every booking end up as a tour straight away?
Not necessarily. An Order can hold shipments that are still Unrouted — waiting to be planned — before any Tour is created for them. See the Shipments article.
Can one shipment be on more than one tour?
Yes, when it is carried in stages. Each Leg is planned onto its own tour, so a shipment passing through a hub can be on one carrier's tour to the hub and another's onward. See the Legs article.