I just started this job a few months ago. So far I’ve been able to straighten out most of the work queue and do away with a lot of paper that wasn’t needed. In the process I’ve been asked to find a way to make shipping easier.
How we’re handling it now isn’t exactly what one would call “efficient”. We have the box guy package boxes, weigh them and record the weight on a job traveler. Once the weight is recorded he brings it to the office for one of the ladies so she can create a pack ID, BoL and print shipping labels. They were using a 3rd party program for the Bill of Lading but I showed them how to generate one straight out of Epicor. Easy enough. We still have to import the pack ID into UPS Worldship and to get our shipping labels though. There appears to be a lot of unnecessary traffic and data entry.
What my plans are so far; to deploy an Epicor workstation on the ship floor that the box guy can use to generate pack ID’s, BoL’s and capture weights. Then he can also import that data into Worldship and get his shipping labels to put right on the boxes while he’s right there.
Beyond Manifest, what other options are out there that could handle our shipping or make it easier? Does anyone have any experience with integrating UPS APIs into Epicor? How did that turn out?
If we could have the box guy just enter the data into Epicor and hit a process button to capture weight, grab a tracking number and print a label, that would be ideal.
We haven’t integrated UPS, but we have our own integration with our primary carrier. It uses their REST APIs and has been pretty much fuss-free for two years now. So much so that I’d have to go dig it out to be able to advise any more than that because we haven’t had to look at it since!
I think carrier APIs are usually quite robust and relatively simple, from what I’ve seen, so if you’re comfortable dealing with that type of thing and the Epicor tools, and have only a single carrier, rolling your own can make sense.
I’ve done the integration before using just WorldShip directly. WorldShip has an import tool that can look into a SQL DB and write some queries to pull data directly from Epicor. So I just used that tool to create a query where worldShip will query the information directly out of EPicor and all the employee has to do is “scan” the Pack ID into worldship and the information flows right in.
Justin - Epicor released a new QuickShip module for UPS/Fedex in the spring. It’s the lightweight version of Manifest - or so it’s promoted as that. You might want to give epicor a call and see what it can do for you.
That’s kind of how we have it setup now. The only problem is that it appears to be only one way. We can pull data from Epicor to Worldship but we can’t send the data from Worldship back to Epicor. I think all we really want to send back to Epicor is the tracking number and weight though.
I’ll look into it, thank you!
Unfortunately we have numerous carriers but our biggest is UPS. If I can knock out the UPS part of it that would be an immense help.
UPS also has the same mechanism for export as for import. You could have it generate a CSV file of the reocrds it creates then use something like Service Connect to puill it in… but the option of getting the new ship service from Epicor sounds way better I forgot about that new product.
As others have said, if a ready-made solution can do what you want then go for that to save yourself the work and later possible maintenance. If it falls short of your requirements for any reason then feel free to jog me if needed, because I think our solution does do what you say you’re wanting - it certainly writes the tracking number back to Epicor.