opencart orders and printing postage

I'm fairly new to opencart and was wondering how most people print postage labels for their opencart orders?

I've been struggling with this for a while and I may be looking at it completely the wrong way since I can't seem to find a solution.

Currently I use stamps.com to import orders from my ebay webstore, and directly from paypal. On a daily basis, I import all orders into the batch section of my postage software, setup my weights, and then print all postage at once on the label printer.

Since stamps.com is not integrated with opencart, I can not import my orders from opencart into my postage printing software.

So how do others pull orders from opencart to prepare them for postage printing? I am open to any suggestions including new postage software. I figure there has to be something out there that works this way. Automatically importing address' and batch printing postage labels is a huge part of keeping my business going.

Thanks!

Terry

Thanks.

I have been in communication with the stamps.com people , but overall it's a pretty huge undertaking ... it is something I won't mind adding an extension / support for but will be low on my priority list ... would likely be 2 months from now before it gets completed.

I figure it is a pretty big deal since it doesn't exist yet.

I'm also very curious how others deal with printing postage labels from opencart orders. I figure there has to be a simple way to do this for people receiving more than just a few orders per day.

Thanks,

Terry

Since I use Paypal for all my orders via payments pro and standard, importing orders from paypal includes my opencart orders in stamps.com. I print them one at a time though (don't trust myself to not ship the wrong item in the wrong box otherwise lol) I also have the stamps.com addon to quickbooks so could print labels that way too if needed.

Don't know what payment processor you are using, but you might see if they have a way to import to stamps.com

Right now I'm using paypal standard and doing the same thing, importing orders from paypal into stamps.com batch section. So yes I do get all my opencart orders. It's the shipping address that gives me a problem.

When a customer checks out on the website, they enter their shipping information. Then when they pay with payal they use thier paypal account which may have a different shipping address. So the problem is that stamps.com will only import the paypal address for that particular order. Which means I have to manually go and check each and every order to make sure they match, and if they don't I have to manually change it since the opencart shipping address is where I need to ship. This is very time consuming and prone to errors. As it is now, I spend over 1 hour a day just printing labels with the batch software. Used to only spend 5 to 10 minutes before I started having this issue.

One thing I do to avoid putting the wrong label on the wrong item, is that I hand write the contents of the order on the back of the label as they are printing from the machine. As I am package the parts, I just look at the back of the label, package what I need to, then stick the label on the envelope or box. This works great for me, but may not be the best solution for everyone.

I figure if stamps.com or any other postage service would integrate with opencart, then you could simply import your orders directly from opencart avoiding paypal all together. This would bring in the correct shipping address every time. Simply double check the weights, and then print.

Thanks for the info.

I just print the invoice from opencart and leave it open in a new tab Then I can copy and paste the shipping address into stamps.com if it is a different address than paypal had. most of the time it isn't.

I use the invoice to double check contents but just in 10 years have always done them 1 at a time Wish it only took me an hour - shipping for me is usually about 4 hours a day just due to the number of packages I send every day

Sounds like you have a lot of orders. The hour I spend right now is only in stamps.com. Then I take my labels and start packaging. But I used to print labels much quicker. I really like the batch process and it has never failed me until I started using opencart. Not to cut on opencart, excellent platform. Just have to work out this small issue so I can continue with the stress free and quick batch processing I used to have.

Thanks!

Hi Terry,

Does OpenCart provide the ability to download your order data into an Excel, TSV, CSV or XML file? If so, Stamps.com could import that data via our ODBC connection. You would create a folder on your desktop, download the orders to that folder, and then Stamps.com will pull the data in from that folder. (You would need to do field mapping on the first import.) Once the connection is established, all you would need to do is download the orders and then click refresh and Stamps.com will grab all the data.

After the data is in Stamps.com and shipping labels have been printed, the software will create an export file that will include shipping date, mail class, mail cost and delivery confirmation number.

I'm not sure if OpenCart has the ability to import that second file, but if so it could post all the shipping data to your orders in OpenCart.

Let me know if you have any questions.
Eric
Stamps.com

Hi Eric,

Thank you for this. I will be trying this right away. I will let you know if I have any questions while setting it up.

One thing I have to say is the stamps.com support is excellent.

Thanks again,

Terry

Hi Eric,

I wanted to let you know that I am now successfully importing orders from opencart into stamps.com using your method via an .XLS file. I posted how I am doing this on the stamps.com integration thread:

http://forum.opencart.com/viewtopic.php ... 0&start=20

It works quickly and seems to be very accurate (field mapping, etc..)

Thanks for this great tip. It will honestly save me at least an hour a day when processing orders.

Terry