How can I add USPS tracking numbers to shipments?

And also distribute them to the right customers?

[tomld2]

I am looking for a way to add USPS (not UPS) tracking numbers to my shipments. I also want to provide these numbers via email to my customers. I ship 3000-5000 packages a months and obviously can not do this manually one by one. Does anyone know how I can easily place tracking numbers on these and email the numbers to the right customers automatically? Any ideas?

Thanks
Tom

[Rachel]

Tom, we only ship about 50 packages through the PO, so might not be using the same method. However, when I fill out the customer's info for having the package sent, there's only a space for their email address. USPS automatically sends the customer their delivery confirmation number. BTW, this is using USPS's website for creating labels.

[Rachel]

Oops, sorry for the typo. Should say, "there's ALSO a space for their email address".

[Corey Bryant]

Do you have an account with them & are you already using their API?

-Corey

[tomld2]

I don't have an account with them nor am I using their API. Right now all labelling is done manually via directly printing on the shipping envelopes and I postage stamp them with my Neopost postage meter. Is there anyway to feed their API with a list of shipping info, emails, postage amount and output a stack of shipping labels with tracking info and also having that track info emailed to the customers?

[Conard]

What brand of shopping cart do you use?
I use a program that does this that works with Yahoo!, Ebay and Miva.
It will connect to the USPS site, download 1 to 1,0000's of labels at a time, print them out 4 to a page with no manual entry what so ever.
It also prints up sales receipts, invoices and tracks the sales information of all of the products.

[Corey Bryant]

Well you need to sign up with them. This way you can actually have a few things automated.

Does your cart coming with connectivity to USPS? Most do & this should help you out. Most even have a way to print out the labels as well

-Corey

[tomld2]

I don't use a boxed shopping cart. Instead it is a custom coded checkout process with a desktop order management application. So it has no USPS integration. But it sounds like if I have a USPS account I can customize my scripts to work with USPS's API and automate alot of these tasks?

[Sunshyn]

I had an easy enough time adding something like this to my order management/status system. When I mark orders as shipped it automatically sends an email with the confirmation number to the customer. That way the confirmation number is available on each customer's order status page as well since quite a few don't seem to get the emails or at least prefer looking it up from our site.

Granted, we don't have as many orders so I just paste the confirmation numbers as we print the labels.

[Corey Bryant]

Yes it should be pretty easy to integrate with your shopping cart. They wil give you code & examples to help you with the integration

-Corey

[tomld2]

Do you know if you can use the USPS API system to print shipping labels directly onto envelopes rather than onto sticky labels?

Also does anyone know if USPS offers bulk discounts for tracking services and if so what they cost per?

[Corey Bryant]

I think this link should be OK to post: www.usps.com/webtools

But yes you can do it.

-Corey

[sun818]

USPS does not offer tracking except on Express Mail packages. USPS offers "delivery confirmation" which is not the same as tracking. Anyway, if you ship 3000-5000 packages a month, I suggest you automate by using a service called DAZzle by Endicia.com. For batch printing via Endicia’s DAZzle software, they have a separate program called Tarantula. You can use Tarantula to as a "print preparation" program.

I only ship about 300-500 packages myself, but I think it could scale very elegantly for your situation.

[edited by: lorax at 1:24 pm (utc) on Jan. 18, 2005]
[edit reason] delinked [/edit]