Asset Return Shipments
PurpletGo can generate a prepaid return label - FedEx, UPS, DHL, or USPS - so a remote employee can ship their equipment back instead of handing it over in person. This is a Team and Enterprise feature, available from the Equipment Return Tracking page in the main navigation.
If no carrier credentials are configured on the server, label creation and tracking fall back to a sandbox simulation (a fake tracking number and a generic carrier tracking-page link), so the feature can be tried out without live carrier accounts. Any shipment created this way is flagged as sandbox in the success message.
Generating a return label
Click "New Shipment"
From the Equipment Return Tracking page, click New Shipment.
Pick the employee and carrier
Select the offboarding record and choose a carrier - FedEx Ground, UPS Ground, DHL Express, or USPS Priority Mail.
Fill in shipper and recipient details
Enter the employee's address (shipper) and your office or IT depot's address (recipient), plus an estimated package weight and description.
Select which assets are in the box
Optionally check off which of the employee's deployed assets are travelling in this package. This is what lets PurpletGo auto-close those specific assets later - it's not required, but without it nothing gets updated automatically when the package arrives.
Create the label
Click Create Label. PurpletGo calls the carrier's API, stores the tracking number and label URL on the shipment record, and returns a link to the label so you can print and send it to the employee.
Tracking a shipment
Open a shipment to see its live status and event history. Statuses are normalized across carriers:
- Label Created - label generated, not yet scanned
- In Transit - picked up and moving
- Out for Delivery - arriving today
- Delivered - received at destination
- Exception - a carrier-reported issue
- Voided - the label was cancelled
Click Refresh Tracking to pull the latest status from the carrier on demand (rate-limited to 10 refreshes per shipment every 5 minutes). If a carrier check fails, PurpletGo records the failure and backs off automatically before retrying on any scheduled background refresh, so a carrier outage doesn't get hammered with repeated calls.
If tracking sync keeps failing, PurpletGo shows a warning on the shipment with the last error. Once you've confirmed delivery some other way, use Mark Delivered rather than waiting on the carrier API.
Assets are returned automatically on delivery
There's no manual "confirm receipt" step. The moment a shipment's tracking status first flips to Delivered - whether from a live carrier refresh or a manual override - PurpletGo automatically marks every asset linked to that shipment as Returned. Assets already flagged Lost are left alone, since a physical delivery can't undo that determination, and the auto-return only fires once per shipment (a later re-check of an already-delivered shipment won't re-run it).
Manual override: Mark Delivered
If carrier tracking is broken, lagging, or you've confirmed delivery another way (say, the employee emailed a photo), click Mark Delivered on the shipment. This applies the same delivered-status logic - including the automatic asset return - without waiting on the carrier's API. You can attach an optional note explaining how delivery was confirmed.
Equipment condition photos
You can attach photos of returned equipment directly to a shipment - useful for documenting condition on arrival. Uploads are limited to JPEG, PNG, WebP, or GIF, up to 10 MB, and can include a short condition note. Photos can be deleted later if needed.
Voiding a shipment
If a label was created by mistake or is no longer needed, click Void on the shipment. A shipment that's already been delivered can't be voided.
Label costs
Carrier charges are billed to whichever carrier account is configured on the server for your organisation. PurpletGo doesn't add a markup - check your carrier contract for per-label rates.