[getDeoGo]

Opening this thread to find out who would be interested in partnering-up to sponsor (pay Ecwid) for the expedited development of USPS shipping label integration.

Without this native integration, most of us are left with partial shipping label solutions, especially considering there aren't any 3rd party products that are fully integrated with Ecwid at the time of this post.

The native USPS integration would:
1. Allow for the printing of one or more USPS shipping labels
2. Support for all the available USPS shipping service options available in services like PayPal Shipping/Multi-Order shipping, Stamps.com, Endicia.com, ReadyShipper, etc.
3. Allow for the setting of shipping weight, shipping service, package sizes, and any other values needed to create a USPS shipping label. The setting should be able to be performed on one, or multiple orders at the same time. Ideally, the system would allow us to create pre-sets to define types of shipping services.
4. The shipping label service should use/pull in values from the order to create defaults for the shipping label. For example, the order weight and selected shipping method.
5. Address validation should be part of it as well.
6. The integration should support multiple printer, including standard inkjet/laser printing as well as the popular shipping label printers like Dymo and Zebra.
7. It should also automatically pull in tracking numbers and update the tracking number field, as well as the fulfillment status field for each order that is being processed (aka, like pressing the "Ship" button on each order).

From our own personal experience, a decent model to look at is PayPal Multi-Order shipping. For us, that service is fairly complete, except there is no way to get tracking numbers back into Ecwid easily and there are a few other short-comings as well.

The quote Ecwid provided to us last year was roughly $1,000 to add in this capability. This may or may not be the current price, so this thread should focus on finding the number of people/companies interested in sponsoring the development so we can share in the expense.

Please post a reply if you are interested in sharing in the expense of this module development.

[Shhmokewear]

We're in.

[Austin Hutchison]

I'm willing to help, as or right now, i can only afford $20 or so, once i know my financial situation here in the next month after i get some products finished up i'd be willing to put in up to $100 ... also we need the commercial based pricing other shipping services offer.

I don't think it be too hard to "team up" with a company like stamps to provide the stuff needed, so all ecwid would have to do is to setup a shipping interface, and then have a little graphic somewhere that says powered by stamps (or whatever company).


Another idea, maybe more motivation so we don't have to pay for this feature, but it shouldn't be much harder for ecwid/qualiteam to create a shipping integration for all their carts. This would also give more reason for usps to allow them to be a vendor for postage...beings i'm sure most of the webstores online use a qualiteam cart.

[qballizhere]

Ecwid is integrated with stamps.com http://www.stamps.com/shipping/shopp...

[Austin Hutchison]

Originally Posted by qballizhere

Ecwid is integrated with stamps.com http://www.stamps.com/shipping/shopp...

From my understanding, its not truely intergrated, it will allow a import of orders, but this still won't update shipping and tracking info in ecwid, doesn't import shipping weights and shipping service, and you got to pay another monthly payment.

[Austin Hutchison]

Originally Posted by qballizhere

Ecwid is integrated with stamps.com http://www.stamps.com/shipping/shopp...

I thought the same thing till others told me.

[getDeoGo]

Originally Posted by qballizhere

Ecwid is integrated with stamps.com http://www.stamps.com/shipping/shopp...

As Shhmokewear just mentioned, it's not true integration. I personally called Stamps.com today and their customer service agent agreed that the information on that page was very misleading (which they will be changing).

You can export from Ecwid, but when trying to import into Stamps.com, we ran into problems today because of:
1. Weird symbols in the output
2. Dropping of the leading zeros in zip codes

Then, when importing into Stamps, there were also some weirdness with address validation.

Not saying that those things can't be overcome, but it still seems like you'd have to either 1) manipulate the exported data in the csv, or 2) get Ecwid to modify the export to help the process along.

Lastly, even if you could streamline the Ecwid -> export to CSV -> import into Stamps.com -> export Tracking from Stamps.com to CSV, there still isn't a "import into Ecwid" function that would update shipping status and place the tracking information where it needs to be.

From our pov, Ecwid should be the system of record, so importing the tracking information is just as important.

(For those who care, we'd love to see at the very least a simple Edit order function and a way to print out multiple invoices - we just had to print out 50+ invoices and had to press "Print Invoice" 50 individual times. Ugh.)

[Shhmokewear]

Which would be nice if it were true. What they call 'integration' is actually just csv export and import. An actual integration is much more involved, and doesn't require any intermediate steps.

ETA: If there's an easier method, please enlighten me.

[Taiji]

I strictly use USPS so I would support it

[qballizhere]

Thanks for the info. Was going to look into the service but will hold off for now