UPS is the world’s largest courier and multinational supply chain management company, delivering over 5.5 billion parcels per year. For this reason, it is a very popular integration for Shipster users, especially those that regularly ship to the United States.
Dating back to as early as 1907, UPS is the oldest still active couriers in the United States of America. The courier owes its success partly to its age and ability to adapt and grow as the market changed throughout the 20th century. On their website, UPS states they are “customer first, people led, innovation driven” which is strongly reflected in their forward-thinking business decisions, always looking to modernise and adapt. For example, UPS take advantage of new, cutting edge technology as seen by their recently launched service UPS Flightforward which uses a network of remote-controlled drones to deliver packages. Whilst this venture is still relatively small, it could point towards the future of superfast domestic shipping.
Since UPS is such a large and prolific courier, it naturally offers a huge variety of different services. This includes but is not limited to bulky and heavy items, freight delivery, large volume shipping and integrated returns for both domestic and international delivery. These services are either offered through UPS directly or through one of their multiple subsidiaries.
i-parcel is one of these subsidiaries of UPS. Although it is owned by UPS and uses the same infrastructure to deliver packages, it has its own API which many of our clients choose to integrate with. i-parcel’s aim is to provide online retailers with low cost, easy to track shipping solutions for international orders. They claim to be ‘pioneers in low-cost international delivery for e-commerce parcels’. This is another example of how UPS embraces new technology as i-parcel is accessible through a popular phone app, making it great for small business owners on the go.
Automate which courier is selected for an order based on certain data points (such as weight or destination location). This would allow your Shipster to instantly switch between APIs if you chose to integrate with both UPS and i-parcel.
If items in an order are over a certain weight, volume or dimension, choose for them to be split into separate parcels. This can be automatic, or in the form of a selection pop up. This is a popular weight management tactic to reduce overspending on shipping.
If orders sold on a third-party platform are tagged to reflect this, rules can be mapped to send them on a particular service. For example, all items sold on eBay could be sent UPS Next Day.
For international orders, customs information such as CN22s can be automatically printed or passed on to the courier electronically. Shipster is also able to print other relevant documentation such as invoices in the destination country’s language.
Choose to map in Shipster whether the customer receives tracking notifications from the courier for orders going on a certain service. Select whether this notification is in the form of an email or text. This functionality is only available for certain couriers.
Fix common address mistakes made by customers and avoid repetitive manual address amendments. For example, often when the destination is an island under the jurisdiction of another country, the address fields must be rearranged, and the correct country code added.
When an order is processed in Shipster, the software communicates with UPS’ API and books the shipment in directly with them. Shipster pulls the label format from UPS and prints it. The tracking information is also passed back to Shipster who sends it to your Warehouse management system.
If the courier supports shipping dangerous good then yes we can! We can even automate Shipster to print warning information to accompany dangerous or fragile items, or instructions for the warehouse staff packing the order.
Shipster has the options to print many courier documents such as return labels and CN22s. These can be printed by default, or triggered by certain attributes of an order. We can also set your Shipster up to print any custom document such as marketing material, warehouse instructions, invoices and packing slips.
We charge for the initial setup of your rules and the installation of the software. After this, you will only ever be charged a monthly support fee based on your licenses. If you already have Shipster, a new integration with UPS is no extra charge as it is included in this monthly fee. Check out our pricing page for more information.
In Shipster you can turn despatch days on and off and change collection cut off times for each courier. This would be useful if UPS didn’t pick up your orders on certain days, or usually collect in the middle of the day. For example, if your cut off time was 17:00 and you turned off Sunday, an order processed at 18:00 on a Saturday would have a despatch date of the following Monday.
Shipster is designed to be highly customisable, bespoke service because we understand every company’s needs are different. You can edit and add rules as many times as you like, and we are always open to new operational suggestions. Sometimes customers come to us with requests that we hadn’t even thought of, and our development team explores whether we can make it possible.
- As the pie chart shows, UPS is a popular courier amongst a variety of different sectors
- This is likely because the wide variety of different services appeal to multiple industries’ shipping needs.
- UPS is particularly popular with the fashion industry possibly due to it’s multiple, quick international delivery options.
- Since UPS is American, it is primarily used by Shipster users that regularly ship to the United States and internationally elsewhere.
Daniel Mitchell, Operations Manager
"Shipster for us was like a breath of fresh air with regards to our old system. From the first initial onboarding meeting with Shipster, we could tell they were going to be a company that we could rely on to support our business growth. I have found that no request is too big or small, I have found the team at Shipster are always available which in comparison to our old system is a blessing."
Richard, Operations Manager
The support from Oddsphere for Shipster is second to none. During the implementation of our new warehouse management system including despatch, Shipster was the best-supported element. The service integrates well into all of our carriers and saves a huge amount of time compared to manual entry. The pricing structure of Shipster means the more we send, the more we save which works well for us as a small to medium size business user. Once it’s set up ongoing costs are minimal instead of being tied to a price per parcel. Overall very happy with the service we have received so far.
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