UPS Interface

[chrism1]

One of our sites had a meeting with a UPS rep who stated they can set their software up essentially to lookup customer info (ship to's) and post info back (freight cost on orders) to sql databases. Does anybody have any experience with this and Macola?

Thanks

 

[MacolaHelp]

UPS would love to have your programming business. They actually do a pretty good job, though more expensive than it should be if you use a 3rd party macola interface like shipgear or starship. They (Starship/ShipGear, marketed by V-Technologies, do pretty well, a few things they need to improve, but the price is right if you do 20+ orders/day. Quickly pays for itself. 800-462-4016,

http://www.vtechnologies.com.

Tell the sales dept you heard about them on the tek tips forum. Maybe they'll start a users group, as I've been trying to get some interest in one here for a while, now. I always have stuff that I'd like some other opinions on.

I would be REALLY careful about UPS writing back to my financial system outside a macola "blessed" developer. You couldn't imagine how messed up your data could be if your programmer didn't understand the implications of modifications to a particular table without updating the related tables. Scary.

 

[chrism1]

Thanks for the info.

We were planning on creating a different table in our DATA_01 database, link it up, and write the UPS records to that. Then using Crystal reports glean the information we need. Are there any traps creating a table in a Macola SQL database?

 

[maccrystal]

The V-Technologies solution is a simple and cost effective solution out of the box, as Macolahelp stated. We have used this soluton many times and it works well for low to medium volume shippers. It can automatically write back the tracking number directly to the orders database.It is UPS, FED-X, US POSTal approved. All the database linkages are already defined. This take about a day to install and train. The Multi-user edition UPS is standard, Eltron printer, scale, installation and maintenance would be around $5,000, maybe less.

http://www.appstratinc.com

 

[MacolaHelp]

For the $1495 + $295 annual maintenance that ShipGear costs, why would you do anything else? They read from the macola tables, populate WorldShip with necessary shipment info & write the tracking info back into Macola. They also have a Front Office client to inquire on package deliveries & status of shipped orders. They use an odbc-based import/export function w/WorldShip. Macola uses V-Tech in house to do shipments themselves. Why reinvent the wheel?

 

[chrism1]

Cost.

UPS is consulting on this as a customer service. All we need to do is create a table w/order # and other info UPS can write back.
We'll use Crystal to grab the info we need from this table and the Macola tables.

 

[kscheeler]

Since you're going to stay with UPS and are using Macola SQL why not create a DTS script in Enterprise Manager to automate the export of the necessary information to the type of file they are looking for. Once the DTS script is created you can schedule it to run as often as you want.

Kevin Scheeler

 

[dgillz]

Chris,

I am working on a Starship install right now, please call me and we can discuss.

Software Sales, Training, Implementation and Support for Exact Macola, eSynergy, and Crystal Reports

http://www.trianglepartners.com

 

[MacolaHelp]

Is UPS planning to link the macola order info into worldship so your shipping department doesn't have to rekey it? This is really the beauty of ShipGear or Starship. Most shipping clerks are not typists. With ShipGear or Starship all you have to do is enter the (up to) 8 digit order number after you map the fields into WorldShip & everything is right there. The time savings in data entry alone is huge.