I want to just confirm that the only way to set the status of an inbound shipment is to first create it and then set the status like this code example , it just seems to unnecessary to create then update , unless this APi is not design that way

var inboundShipmentId = inboundShipment.save();

var inboundShipmentUpdate = record.load({
    type: record.Type.INBOUND_SHIPMENT,
    id: inboundShipmentId,
    isDynamic: true
});
inboundShipmentUpdate.setValue({
    fieldId: 'shipmentstatus',
    value: 'inTransit'
} ....

I don't know if you can set the status before save. But if you have to do it after the save I would use record.submitFields instead of loading, updating and saving.

You can set the status on

beforeSubmit

so it should be perfectly possible to set it before save.

yeah, i was thinking on switching it to record.submitFields It is a bit faster, it doesn't seem to work on before save . I'm not sure why the NetSuite docs show

record.load

It wouldn't work before save because just like load you need the id from the save in order to change the field. Like @alien4u mentioned I can't see why you can't set it before save anything that you can set after should be available to set before. I would suggest changing the order in which you set it...ie move it down a few lines maybe all the way to right before save and see if it sticks.

from my testing it does not work on before save if the record never exists before ie create