TNT Express API Integration

• Understand what ExpressConnect Pricing returns and how it differs from a modern REST pricing API.
• Register for ExpressConnect access and get valid TNT account credentials.
• Build a compliant XML price request and submit it correctly.
• Parse the XML response, including prices, charges, and errors.
• Establish a practical path to bring TNT price quotes into Odoo.

• ExpressConnect Pricing is XML-based, not JSON requests and responses are XML documents posted over HTTP.
• Authentication is HTTP Basic Auth using a username and password issued by your TNT representative, not OAuth2.
• A request can batch multiple price checks in one call using repeated priceCheck elements, each tagged with a unique rateId.
• Pricing needs, at minimum, sender/delivery country (plus town and postcode for accuracy), shipment weight, volume, and number of pieces.
• Responses return one or more rated services per price check, each with a total price, price excluding VAT, and VAT amount.
• Optional priceBreakDown returns itemized charge elements such as fuel surcharges and VAT lines.
• Errors come back as one of three types: runtimeError (system-side), parseError (malformed XML), or brokenRule (bad input data, e.g. invalid postcode).
• ExpressConnect Pricing does not support non-ASCII characters, and special characters like "&" in addresses must be escaped or wrapped in CDATA.

ExpressConnect Pricing returns an estimated cost for shipping a consignment between two locations, for one or more TNT services. It does not book a shipment or generate a label for that you would use the related ExpressConnect Shipping interface.

A price request can specify:

• Sender and delivery address (country, and ideally town and postcode)
• Collection date and time
• Product/service code (or omit it to get pricing across all valid services, up to 10)
• Consignment details: total weight, volume, and number of pieces (or itemized piece lines)
• Account number and account country, for account-specific rates
• Insurance value and goods value, if insurance is requested
• Terms of payment (sender pays or receiver pays)
• Currency for the returned price

If you don't supply town and postcode, TNT falls back to a default depot for the country, which produces a less accurate estimate.

Step 1 - Contact your local TNT representative to register for ExpressConnect. There is no self-service signup portal like Lufthansa's or Mercedes-Benz's developer console; access is arranged directly with TNT.

Step 2 - You will be issued a username and password. The same credentials are used across ExpressConnect Pricing, Shipping, and Tracking.

Step 3 - You will also need one or more valid TNT account numbers, each tied to a country, to get account-specific rates rather than standard published rates.

Step 4 - Use the Express Web Services test site (behind the same login) to validate your XML requests before writing code against the live endpoint.

Endpoint
POST https://express.tnt.com/expressconnect/pricing/getprice

Authentication: HTTP Basic Auth, using your ExpressConnect username and password in the request header.

Minimal example request

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="no"?>
<priceRequest>
  <appId>PC</appId>
  <appVersion>3.2</appVersion>
  <priceCheck>
    <rateId>rate1</rateId>
    <sender>
      <country>GB</country>
      <town>Atherstone</town>
      <postcode>CV9 2RY</postcode>
    </sender>
    <delivery>
      <country>ES</country>
      <town>Alicante</town>
      <postcode>03006</postcode>
    </delivery>
    <collectionDateTime>2026-09-15T09:00:00</collectionDateTime>
    <product>
      <type>N</type>
    </product>
    <account>
      <accountNumber>123456789</accountNumber>
      <accountCountry>GB</accountCountry>
    </account>
    <currency>GBP</currency>
    <priceBreakDown>true</priceBreakDown>
    <consignmentDetails>
      <totalWeight>1.25</totalWeight>
      <totalVolume>0.1</totalVolume>
      <totalNumberOfPieces>1</totalNumberOfPieces>
    </consignmentDetails>
  </priceCheck>
</priceRequest>

Key fields

• appId - always "PC".
• appVersion - 3.2 is current and also returns transit time / estimated delivery data; 3.0 and 2.0 are older, price-only variants.
• rateId - a key you choose to match each priceCheck to its result in the response. Required if batching multiple checks in one request.
• product.type - "D" for documents, "N" for non-document packages.
• product.id - omit to get pricing across all valid services; supply it (e.g. "15N") to price one specific service.
• You can include several priceCheck blocks in a single priceRequest to batch multiple quotes in one call.

Example response

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" standalone="yes"?>
<document>
  <requestId>28817</requestId>
  <priceResponse>
    <ratedServices>
      <rateId>rate1</rateId>
      <currency>GBP</currency>
      <ratedService>
        <product>
          <id>09N</id>
          <productDesc>9:00 Express</productDesc>
        </product>
        <totalPrice>288.47</totalPrice>
        <totalPriceExclVat>238.40</totalPriceExclVat>
        <vatAmount>50.07</vatAmount>
      </ratedService>
    </ratedServices>
  </priceResponse>
</document>

• requestId - quote this if you contact TNT support about a specific request.
• ratedServices.rateId - matches back to the rateId you sent, so you can associate results with the original request when batching.
• Each ratedService gives totalPrice, totalPriceExclVat, and vatAmount for one available service.
• If priceBreakDown was set to true, each ratedService also includes a chargeElements breakdown (e.g. fuel surcharge, VAT line items).
• With appVersion 3.2, each product also returns estimatedTimeOfArrival and collection cut-off times, useful if you want to show price and transit time together.

Errors are returned inside an errors element as one of three types:

• runtimeError - system-side failure; advise the user to retry or contact TNT support.
• parseError - malformed request XML; a development-time issue to fix in your code.
• brokenRule - bad input data (invalid postcode, unknown account number, missing mandatory field), tagged with a messageType of Information, Warning, or Error, plus a rateId so you know which price check it relates to.

• This is an XML interface, not JSON plan to build and parse XML rather than call a REST/JSON SDK.
• There's no OAuth token to refresh; credentials are sent with every request via Basic Auth, so store them securely as you would any password.
• Because it's a legacy interface, response times and availability are worth monitoring in production build retry logic around runtimeError.
• Since TNT is now part of FedEx, if you're integrating a new account or region, check with your TNT/FedEx representative whether ExpressConnect is still the correct interface for that account, or whether it has moved to a FedEx API.
• Non-ASCII characters aren't supported; sanitize address and reference fields before sending.

Odoo has no native TNT connector, so this is a custom module. Because the interface is XML/Basic-Auth rather than OAuth2/JSON, the Odoo-side plumbing is simpler in one respect (no token refresh) but requires XML handling instead of JSON.

• Add a button on the Sales Order or Delivery form (Odoo's Inventory/Sales modules) that builds a priceCheck XML request from the order's shipping address and package details.
• Use Python's standard library (e.g. lxml or xml.etree.ElementTree) to build the request and parse the response inside the module.
• Send the request with Python's requests library, using HTTP Basic Auth with the stored ExpressConnect credentials.
• Display the returned rate(s) to the user, and optionally store the chosen price on the order.

• If you need quotes for many open orders at once, build the requests as a single priceRequest with multiple priceCheck elements (one per order), each with its own rateId set to the Odoo record ID.
• Parse the response and match each ratedServices.rateId back to the originating Odoo record to update prices in bulk.