Correct address data is essential for efficient and accurate shipping. As a rule, nShift’s products expect to receive valid and existing address information in a format compliant with each country’s national address standard.

The address data submitted to nShift is often subject to validation by the carrier, and incorrect data will result in validation errors or rejection. The exact validation rules are owned and controlled by each carrier, and there may be discrepancies between what a specific carrier considers a valid address and all valid addresses within a country.

nShift advises customers to either implement a process to ensure address master data quality at the point of data entry or to design a process capable of handling validation errors during booking and label printing.

There are several products for address validation available on the market, including www.loqate.com and www.melissa.com. It’s also possible to procure address data sets which can be used for internal validation from vendors such as www.geopostcodes.com. 

For official information on the correct address data formats for specific countries, please refer to the homepage of the Universal Postal Union (UPU): https://www.upu.int/en/Postal-Solutions/Programmes-Services/Addressing-Solutions#addressing-knowledge-centre