Top Shipping Rules of 2020

2020 has been a significant year of constant change, and our clients have been requesting a variety of rules to keep their Shipster effective. Rule changes and additions are always no extra charge on top of your monthly support fee, and our technical team are always happy to create new functions to improve Shipster.

Here are some of the top most used rules of 2020: 

1 - Pop-ups

Shipster has multiple pop up options that have many different functions. For example, you can change an order’s weight or split it into multiple parcels. Pop up rules can be written to say anything you want and many of our clients this year have used this function to remind their packers of process changes.

2 - Country of Manufacture

Pass on the country of origin/ manufacture of each item into Shipster and automatically print accurate customs documentation that includes this information. This is new rule we put in place to ensure our clients are compliant when shipping to the EU after Brexit.

3 - Paperless Trading

In prep for Brexit, we’ve also added more functions to allow for paperless trading. This is where customs documentation is sent to couriers electronically instead of physical print-outs.

4 - Custom PDFs

Shipster can print custom PDFs of any design. Automate these to print for every order, or in certain instances. Some of our clients have found this useful for updating their customers on changes to their returns policy or processes.

5 - Return labels/ embedded returns

Use rules to print returns labels for a variety of couriers, streamlining the returns process for your customers. Print them separately or embed them into your custom documents.

6 - Orders sold on Third Party Platforms

If orders sold on a third-party platform are tagged to reflect this, rules can be mapped to send them on a particular service, or print certain invoices. This rule has been especially popular due to an increase of retailers selling on Amazon.

7 - Reset Pricing

We’ve seen an increase in the need for accurate information on CN22s and Commercial Invoices with more and more countries charging fines for incorrect information. To combat this we’ve created a ‘rest pricing’ rule to ensure the sum of every item matches the orders total cost.

8 - Remove characters/ trim fields

Another new rule we’ve added to our roster is the ability to remove certain characters from order information. This rule was written for a client who needed area codes removed from the beginning of phone numbers.
 

9 - Days of the week rules

Select certain couriers or services based on the day of the week. These rules are usually most helpful for weekend delivery as some couriers may be quicker or more cost effective on these days.

10 - Partial Dispatches

Allow for an order or be despatched even if only a portion is ready for shipment. This ensures certain items do not delay the delivery of the whole order so are shipped separately. This process has been recently perfected with PeopleVox so that the exact weight and price of the items being partially dispatched are communicated, reducing shipping costs.

What will you be doing to keep your shipping operations fresh this year? There are tonnes more ideas for how you can improve the efficiency at your packing benches here.