Error when trying to confirm a shipments using customer account.

Hi ​@kkraus

This FedEx error pops up when the payment type for shipping charges doesn’t match what’s allowed for return labels or pending shipments in their system. FedEx is saying it only supports billing to the sender (us) or a third party—not directly to the customer’s account—in these cases.

Could you check with the customer if their FedEx account is set up for third-party billing? If not, we might need to tweak the shipment settings here—either bill it to your account or update it to use their account as a third party.
 

Let me know what you find, and we can help adjust things on your end!

-James

​@jamesh, we’ll probably have to turn the customers into third parties. We have too many customers to ask all of them to turn on third party shipping. 

How would I go about the process of setting up the customers’ third party accounts and getting those accounts onto the Sales Orders/Shipments?

​@kkraus ,

You wouldn’t turn them into third parties.  This is just referring to how their billing logic is set up with the carrier you’re using.  Sorry for being unclear.  What I’m saying that if they’re not set up to be a receiver using their customer account then the only other option is third party.

For example, in the Carriers screen, Customer Accounts Tab where you add the customer billing accounts, the Billing Type needs to be set to Receiver.  If it’s set to third party and they’re not set up to be a third party for billing purposes then they would need to have that set up before you can use it that way.  Otherwise, they would need to be set up as “Receiver”. 

Please check to see if they’re set up as a Receiver or Third Party under the Billing type for the specific carrier you’re trying to use as Receiver is the most common setup.  

Also, for clarity, is this a shipment for a standard order?

It will automatically use the customer’s carrier account whenever this specific ship via is selected and it is active. 

​@jamesh Ok, so I checked and all of the accounts are set to the Receiver Type. I tested turning one of the accounts into Third Party, and that allowed for the shipment to be confirmed. Should I do that for the rest of the accounts, or are there other side effects that this might cause? Any other steps than switching the billing type?

It would depend on the shipment type. If these are return orders, the only shipment type allowed with Fedex according to the error will be you or a third party, not the receiver. If you have a third party shipping account it’s likely billing them. 
 

If it’s not a return order (Not common), then it’s likely a setting on the FedEx carrier settings page:

 

Specifically the Post incidia setting might be set to Parcel_Return, rather than Parcel_Select or whatever else it should be for your organization. 

I’d start here with “Parcel_Select” Or “Media_Mail” if approriate for what you’re shipping before changing all of your shipping settings on your customers to Third Party as that doesn’t seem like the right course of action. 
 

• Why PARCEL_SELECT? FedEx SmartPost often defaults to USPS Parcel Select for cost-effective, non-urgent deliveries to residential or business addresses, making PARCEL_SELECT a common choice for e-commerce or bulk shipping scenarios. It’s widely used for lightweight parcels and aligns with FedEx’s typical SmartPost workflow unless you’re shipping specialized items (e.g., media mail) or returns.

Let me know what setting you had and if this helps.

Thanks!

-James

​@jamesh Our account was set to Media_Mail initially. I tried changing it to PARCEL_SELECT, Media_Mail, and Parcel_Return and none of the three worked. They all had the same error as before. 

For the shipments specially, we’re trying to have both a shipment and a return simultaneously, via the “Create Return Label Automatically” option. That seems to be the source of the issue, as turning off on a ship via code allows for confirming the shipment. 

​@jamesh Any further advice?