Connect Cheetah for deliveries in Israel

Cheetah is an Israeli delivery company. Once connected, Brainerce can create the shipment with Cheetah when an order is paid, fetch the label, put the tracking number on the order, follow the parcel and close the order when Cheetah reports it delivered. Cheetah invoices you directly under your own contract. Brainerce never charges you for the delivery.

What you need before you start

1. A customer number from Cheetah (up to 8 digits).
2. An API token from Cheetah for that customer number. Ask Cheetah for it. A token is valid for one year and Cheetah renews it, so when deliveries start failing with "Cheetah did not accept the token", ask Cheetah to renew it and paste the new one into the Cheetah settings.
3. A shipping address set on your default warehouse. Brainerce asks for it once, for every carrier. Cheetah itself collects from the address on your contract with them.

Also ask Cheetah to switch on cancelling for your account. It is a permission they grant per customer. Without it you can still create deliveries, but cancelling one from Brainerce is refused and you have to cancel it with Cheetah.

Connect Cheetah

1. Open Apps, choose the Shipping tab, and install Cheetah.
2. Enter your customer number and your token. The company name is optional (up to 8 characters; Cheetah cuts anything longer). When it is empty, your warehouse name is used.
3. Confirm where you ship from.

Brainerce checks the customer number and token when you save them. If Cheetah does not accept that customer number and token together, you are told straight away, before any order is affected. The check sends Cheetah a request that is invalid on purpose, so it creates no delivery and no courier is sent. If Cheetah cannot be reached at that moment, the wizard says the token was not checked and lets you continue; the first delivery will show the problem if there is one.

The check cannot tell whether the token has expired early or whether your account may use every feature (for example cancelling a delivery). A token lasts one year; when deliveries start failing with "Cheetah did not accept the token", ask Cheetah to renew it.

There is no Test mode. Everything you ship goes to Cheetah's live system and Cheetah sends a real courier. Do not create test deliveries unless you want a courier to turn up.

Settings you may need to change

Under Advanced in the Cheetah settings:

• Shipment type code. Leave 140 for a delivery to the customer's door. Change it only if Cheetah gave you a different code.
• Cargo type code. Leave 200 for a small e-commerce parcel. The codes depend on your contract: for example 199 is a large e-commerce parcel, 155 a bulky parcel, 160 a tall parcel and 170 a pallet. The same code is used for every order. Brainerce cannot pick a different one per order yet.
• Cash on delivery payment code. Only needed for orders paid at the door. See "Cash on delivery" below.

What the customer pays

Cheetah does not publish prices that Brainerce can read: your price is a contract between you and Cheetah. So what a customer pays at checkout comes from your own Zones & Rates, exactly as for any store without a live-rate carrier. See Set up shipping zones and rates. Cheetah never adds a price option of its own to checkout.

Buying the label

By hand. Open the order, choose Buy label, and pick Cheetah. There is no price next to it, because Cheetah invoices you later under your contract.

Automatically. In the Cheetah settings, choose Automatic label purchase. The recommended mode waits 30 minutes after payment, which is your window to cancel a wrong order or fix an address before anything is sent to Cheetah. Nothing is ever bought automatically for an order that was cancelled, refunded, collected in person, already shipped by hand, or has no physical items.

If Cheetah refuses a shipment, the order does not stop. A failed shipment appears on Shipping → Overview with Cheetah's own reason. The common ones:

• Cheetah does not recognise the city or street. Cheetah checks the delivery city and street against the official list of Israeli localities and streets, and expects them spelled in Hebrew. Fix the shipping address on the order and buy the label again. If your store lets customers type their address in English, expect some of these.
• No price for this delivery area, shipment type or cargo type. Your Cheetah contract does not cover it. Check the codes in the Advanced settings, or ask Cheetah.
• The recipient has no phone number or no name. Cheetah's courier calls the customer, so both are required. Add them to the order and buy the label again. Make your checkout ask for a phone number: the starter store from create-brainerce-store shows the field but does not make it mandatory, and a store built another way may not ask at all.

Cash on delivery

Cheetah's courier can collect payment at the door, but only when Brainerce tells Cheetah the amount and a payment code that Cheetah gives you. Brainerce knows an order is cash on delivery from its payment method (for example an order you create in the dashboard with the payment method Cash on delivery). A normal checkout on your storefront is paid online and never needs this. So for an order that is not paid and has the payment method cash on delivery:

• Brainerce refuses to book it with Cheetah until you enter the Cash on delivery payment code in the Cheetah settings. This is on purpose: without it the courier would deliver the parcel and collect nothing.
• The order must be in Israeli shekels (ILS). Cheetah collects only shekels. An order created in the dashboard defaults to USD unless you chose a currency, and Brainerce refuses it and tells you the order's currency.
• What the courier collects is the amount still owed. If a gift card paid part of the order, only the rest is collected.

Buy the label BEFORE you mark the order as paid. Once an order is marked paid, Brainerce treats it as paid and tells Cheetah to collect nothing, so the courier would hand the parcel over without taking the money. For cash on delivery: buy the label first, and use Mark as Paid only after Cheetah has collected and passed the money on to you. See Process an order.

Bank transfer is not cash on delivery: Cheetah collects nothing for it.

Label and tracking

The tracking number appears on the order as soon as Cheetah accepts the shipment. The label is saved by Brainerce, so you can print it from the Print label link. It is a 10 x 10 cm PDF.

If Cheetah accepted the shipment but the label has not arrived yet, the row says Label not ready and offers Get label. The shipment is already booked, so nothing is lost: press it again in a minute.

Brainerce asks Cheetah about open shipments every few minutes at first, then less often as the parcel gets older. When Cheetah reports the parcel delivered, the order is marked Completed and the customer gets the delivered email.

A failed delivery or a parcel sent back to you is not recognised yet. Cheetah has not given Brainerce its list of status codes, so only "delivered" is understood. Such a parcel keeps showing as in transit, and Brainerce shows Cheetah's own status words in the order's history. If a parcel has not arrived when it should, check with Cheetah. The order is not changed for you.

Cancelling a shipment

You can cancel until the Cheetah driver picks the parcel up. If Cheetah refuses, Brainerce tells you in Cheetah's words and the shipment stays as it was. If it says cancelling is not enabled for your account, ask Cheetah to enable it.

What Cheetah does not do in Brainerce

• No pickup points. Only delivery to the customer's door. Cheetah's collection shops (Cheetah Shops) cannot be chosen at checkout.
• No live price quotes. See above.
• No test mode. See above.
• No return labels.
• No weight or size is sent to Cheetah. Cheetah prices by cargo type, not by weight. Brainerce sends the one cargo type code from the settings for every order.
• Israel only. An order to any other country never goes to Cheetah.

Using Cheetah with another carrier

You can install more than one shipping app. When two of them can deliver to the same address, the one with the lower Priority number buys automatically; with no priority set, the carrier you installed first does. Give Cheetah priority 1 to have it handle Israeli orders. Deliver only to these countries narrows a carrier further, and can only narrow what the carrier offers.

Need help? Email [email protected].