Shipping Software – How to Know When Your Business Needs It

Posted by admin on November 20, 2014

What is Shipping Software?

Coming in a variety of forms, shipping software is a computer program that is specifically designed to process labels (with your customer addresses), track deliveries, access and manage a range of carrier services.

Why Would I need Shipping Software?

Shipping software is not for every business. It is only cost effective for your business, and the shipping software creator, if your business is of a sufficient scale to justify the initial setup. A good figure to work around is if you are sending 10 or more parcels on a daily basis.

So What Are The Benefits Of Using Shipping Software?

Shipping software providers generally have large scale contracts with local, national and international parcel carrier services. The resulting economies of scale lead to reduced unit costs.

Having software that helps you to more efficiently prepare and print customer address labels will save you lots of time, and with a simple API integration, customer data (usually in csv format) can be exported direct from your order management system to the shipping software. Most shipping software providers will process your deliveries through a single invoice, (saving paperwork) despite the fact that you are accessing multiple carrier services.

Having access to multiple carriers through a single ‘dashboard’ gives your business added flexibility. For example, you may decide to start selling internationally; having immediate access to discounted international parcel delivery services via shipping software saves you the hassle involved with setting up a new account with a different carrier.

Does It Matter Which Order Management System I Am Using?

Shipping software companies generally try to integrate with as many order management systems as possible, as this gives them access to a greater variety of markets. As an example, UK-based shipping software company Parcelhub is compatible with eBay, Amazon and a host of order management systems such as Magento, Linnworks, Netsuite and ChannelAdvisor.

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