This article will discuss the difference between live and custom shipping providers and how this effects generating shipping documents.

A LIVE shipping provider is any shipping provider that you have associated with an active third party shipping account, such as UPS, FedEx, Stamps.com/USPS.

A custom shipping provider is any shipping provider that you may want available for fulfillment that does not necessarily have an active account linked to it and requires you to calculate your own shipping costs, such as "Hand Delivery" or "Free Shipping."

There are a few simple ways to tell which is which in Lead Commerce.

Step One:

Navigate to Sales>Configuration>Shipping Providers

Step Two:

Drill into one of the configured Shipping Providers

You can see on the Provider Type field that FedEx is selected, indicating that there is an account configured. Additionally, you can navigate to the API tab.

Here you can find all of the account credentials, indicating that there is an active third party API / active FedEx account configured.

To tell if it is a CUSTOM provider:

"Custom" will be indicated in the Provider Type field

ALSO, under the API tab, you will find this notification