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. Brainerce asks you for no pickup address. Cheetah collects from the address registered on your contract with them. If you ship from more than one place, ask Cheetah to register each address on your contract (see "Where Cheetah collects from" below).

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 store name is used.
3. Finish. Brainerce starts booking deliveries with Cheetah 30 minutes after each order is paid. You can turn this off or change it at any time (see "Buying the label").

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.

Every Cheetah setting

Cheetah takes no package defaults and no environment switch: it prices by cargo type under your contract.

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. Cheetah prices a parcel by its cargo type, which depends on its size and weight. Leave 200 for a small e-commerce parcel. Cheetah's cargo types:

  Code	Type	Up to
  200	E-commerce, regular	20 liters, 10 kg, 0.02 m3, longest side 0.5 m
  199	E-commerce, large	100 liters, 20 kg, 0.1 m3, longest side 1 m
  155	Bulky parcel	200 liters, 20 kg, 0.2 m3, longest side 1 m
  160	Tall parcel	100 liters, 20 kg, 0.1 m3, longest side 2 m
  170	Pallet	0.80 x 1.20 m and/or 20 to 360 kg

  The code you set here is the smallest one Brainerce will send. For each order, Brainerce looks at the weight and size of the products in it (from the weight and dimensions on each product) and moves up to a bigger cargo type when the order does not fit the one you set. It never goes below your code. If a product has no weight or no size, Brainerce does not guess: it sends your code, so fill in the weight and dimensions of your products to get the right type automatically. For one shipment that is not like the product (a heavier box, two orders packed together), open Package details in the Create label window and type its weight and size: what you type wins for that label. Brainerce staff can see the cargo type that was sent on the staff-only Shipments page; you cannot open that page, so ask support if you need to check a code. A code that is not in the table above (a custom code from your contract) is always sent as you set it. If you send a parcel under the wrong cargo type, Cheetah changes it to the correct one and adds a handling fee.

  An order bigger than a pallet (over 360 kg) is not booked: Brainerce says so on the shipment, and you arrange it with Cheetah.

• Cash on delivery payment code. Only needed for orders paid at the door. See "Cash on delivery" below.

• Pickup point shipment type code and Pickup point cargo type code. Used only when a customer collects from a Cheetah pickup shop. Leave 240 and 198 unless Cheetah gave you different codes. They are separate from the two codes above, so a pickup order does not use your door-delivery codes. Code 198 only takes a parcel up to 3 kg and up to 30 x 30 x 30 cm. When the products in an order are known to be bigger, Brainerce does not book it to a pickup shop: the shipment shows why, and you change the order to a home delivery. If your products have no weight or size, Brainerce cannot tell, so offer a pickup point rate only for products that fit. See "Pickup points" 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. Press Buy label on the Shipping page, or press Create Label in the Shipping label box of the order's summary, and pick Cheetah. There is no price next to it, because Cheetah invoices you later under your contract.

Automatically. This is how Cheetah starts: Brainerce books the delivery 30 minutes after the order is paid, which is your window to cancel a wrong order or fix an address before anything is sent to Cheetah. On Shipping, press the carrier pill at the top and use Automatic labels to choose: Off, I buy each label myself, 30 minutes after payment (recommended), or Right after payment. In the delay mode you can change the number of minutes (1 to 1440). 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 against the official list of Israeli localities. It accepts the Hebrew name and the usual English one (we tried 30 common cities, including Tel Aviv-Yafo, Jerusalem, Haifa and Be'er Sheva, and all were accepted), so an address a customer picked or typed in English is fine. It refuses a city that is misspelled or does not exist. Fix the shipping address on the order and buy the label again.
• 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. It is not in the order confirmation email, which never waits for shipping. 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 a Cheetah driver has taken the parcel, the order becomes Shipped and the customer gets the shipped email with the tracking number. When Cheetah reports the parcel delivered, the order is marked Completed and the customer gets the delivered email.

The email has the tracking number but no tracking link. Cheetah has not given Brainerce a tracking page for customers, so there is nothing to link to.

What Brainerce understands from Cheetah's tracking. Cheetah gave Brainerce its list of status codes. These are recognised: the parcel was collected and is moving between Cheetah's warehouses (in transit), it is with a courier for delivery, a delivery attempt failed, Cheetah lost the parcel, and the parcel came back from a pickup point or delivery point (returned to you). Delivered and cancelled are read from Cheetah's own flags. Everything else in Cheetah's list is internal (sorting errors, warehouse checks, stock counts): it appears in the order's status history in Cheetah's own words and does not change the shipment.

A parcel that is never delivered and never marked returned still shows as in transit. Cheetah's statuses "finished" and "closed" say a shipment is over, but not whether it was delivered, so Brainerce does not act on them. If a parcel has not arrived when it should, check with Cheetah.

Pickup points (Cheetah shops)

Customers can choose to collect their parcel from a Cheetah partner shop near them, about 780 shops across Israel. Cheetah has no lockers, only shops.

To offer it, add a delivery rate that goes to a pickup point. In Shipping, open the zone, add or edit a rate, and switch on Deliver to a carrier pickup point. Give that rate its own price: it is a separate choice from home delivery, and the customer pays what you set on it, not a Cheetah price.

• At checkout the customer picks the rate, then picks a shop from a list of the nearest ones, with its address and distance. They can search another city. They cannot pay until a shop is chosen.
• The shops listed are Cheetah's own list. Brainerce refreshes it at most every 6 hours and shows only shops that take parcels. If Cheetah cannot be reached the customer sees an error with a retry button, not "no shop near you".
• Opening hours are not shown. Cheetah's list does not include them. You may see a short note from Cheetah (directions, a phone number) under a shop.
• The label goes to the shop. On the order, under Carrier pickup point, you see the shop. The address above it is still the customer's own, and the parcel is delivered to the shop.
• Only Cheetah can fulfil it. The parcel is booked with the same app that listed the shop. If you disconnect Cheetah, or it stops supporting pickup points, an order that chose a shop cannot get a label until you change the order to a home delivery.
• A storefront needs the screen. The Brainerce starter shows the shop picker. A storefront built earlier, by hand or by an AI assistant, does not show this rate at all, even with the switch on and Cheetah connected, until its developer adds the picker and declares it (features: ['pickup-points'] on the SDK client). It keeps working exactly as before in the meantime.
• With Cheetah disconnected the rate is never shown. The switch on the rate does nothing by itself: a connected shipping app that lists pickup points for the customer's country is required.

Where Cheetah collects from

Cheetah collects every parcel from the address on your contract with Cheetah. Brainerce does not send a pickup address, because Cheetah's booking has no field for one, so there is nothing to set up on the Brainerce side. If you ship from more than one place, or you move, ask Cheetah to register the address on your contract. Brainerce cannot tell Cheetah which of your addresses a given order leaves from.

Cancelling a shipment

You can cancel until the Cheetah driver picks the parcel up: on Shipping, press Cancel shipment on the delivery and confirm. 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 address. Brainerce never tells Cheetah where to collect, and cannot choose between several pickup addresses. See "Where Cheetah collects from".
• No lockers, and no opening hours for the shops. See "Pickup points" above.
• No returns to a pickup point. Only delivery to one.
• 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 chooses the cargo type from the weight and size of the products in the order. See "Cargo type code" above.
• 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].