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UPS World Ship
- Thread starter ultrav
- Start date
MacolaHelp
Instructor
You need ShipGear from V-Technologies. I believe the price is $1495 plus $495 annual maintenance. It takes about 1/2 day to setup a vanilla installation w/macola.
I have no direct experience with this, but my understanding is that the WorldShip Software from UPS is actually the V-Technologies ShipGear product for free. I am not aware of any limitations to this free product other than it only ships UPS. I would check in to this though.
Scott Travis
infoSpring, LLC>
Scott Travis
infoSpring, LLC>
MacolaHelp
Instructor
WorldShip is UPS w/no integration to/from Macola unless you can program or update through odbc. ShipGear has done this for you. You load the software, a little box comes up in your Worldship for the macola order. Once keyed in, the worldship is populated with shipping info & the tracking numbers are written back to macola order header comments & manifest files. It works great. Visit or call 8004624016, ask for Caroline, Ann or Chris in sales.
MacolaHelp
Instructor
Also, to clarify. WorldShip is supplied by UPS if your shipping volume is high enough. ShipGear is not free, but is sold by V-tech as middleware. Available for mssql & psql.
mystifying
Technical User
- Dec 7, 2002
- 76
Just to add, we have been using StarShip (also by V-Technologies, very simialr to ShipGear, but with multiple interfaces available... FedEx, etc) for over a year now. The convenience of having the tracking # written back to Macola and also printed on the invoice is so nice! It saves digging through shipment manifests or bugging the shipping dept for tracking #'s. Plus we get fewer calls from customers looking for tracking information, etc. It also cuts down on shipping errors such as packages going to old addresses or shipping ground instead of next day, etc because all of that is only entered at order entry ...no need to rekey for shipping.
But it depends on what you are looking for a shipping program for, if UPS will provide you with WorldShip (they do so pretty freely I understand), there are some features built in that may provide what you are looking for without an additional shipping package. For instance, if you are considering ShipGear to be able to send email confirmations, WorldShip will automatically email confirmations as well. But it does not tie in with information in Macola, so if that is what is important to you (and saving time too), then check out ShipGear. We are using StarShip over terminal services, so the setup was a little more involved (but painless). Its working rather smoothly now.
But it depends on what you are looking for a shipping program for, if UPS will provide you with WorldShip (they do so pretty freely I understand), there are some features built in that may provide what you are looking for without an additional shipping package. For instance, if you are considering ShipGear to be able to send email confirmations, WorldShip will automatically email confirmations as well. But it does not tie in with information in Macola, so if that is what is important to you (and saving time too), then check out ShipGear. We are using StarShip over terminal services, so the setup was a little more involved (but painless). Its working rather smoothly now.
- Thread starter
- #7
Thank you all for your help - maybe I should be more specific. We use clippership (Kewill) for all of our domestic shipments - we had tried StarShip (3-4 years ago) and it was not for us. The problem we are having is with our export shipments. Clippership is very expensive(to add the export module - alot of customization as well) and we would still have to add alot of info for the export shipments (I imagine we will for any software - harmony numbers etc.). I would prefer our export department handle that rather than our shipping dept - so at least for the UPS shipments I wanted something to run from their computers so I was thinking of running World Ship - does anyone have any experience with the export portion?
MacolaHelp
Instructor
If you go the worldship route, you would have to key everything in manually without the shipgear middleware from v-tech. You'd still be faced with the shipping person being a typist with worldship alone because you need to have the scale & all that hooked up to the worldship computer. Your export department couldn't do it unless they had a scale, thermal printer & document printer. However, if your volume is high enough, UPS would probably give you another computer & set up for the export department. Then, if you also added shipgear, the macola order information would populate many of the worldship fields and your tracking information would go back to your macola orders. Your customer service people can use the shipgear front office client to check the progress of the package from your site to the destination. You can send email notifications of shipments, etc, etc. How many packages are you exporting a week?
- Thread starter
- #9
MacolaHelp
Instructor
You should call your UPS rep & ask about whether they will give you equipment based on the volume. I have one site that has a UPS machine setup w/worldship for about 60-100 packages a day. They have another worldship upstairs (the client owns the PC) to do documents & office related packages w/scale & printer supplied from ups. Seems to work for them. Since only 70-75% of your export shipments are UPS, what other carrier do you use? If fedex, it's probably time to look at starship again. They've made a lot of improvements to international shipping from 3-4 years ago. . .
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