OpenCart Community

Automatically posting shipping info (including tracking number and link) to opencart

I just thought I'd drop a quick note about a problem I've been trying to solve since opened up my web store. The issue I was having was shipping, I've felt that opencart was weak in the shipping department, specifically with a system that provided feedback to the customer when an order was shipped. Originally I processed all of my shipments through paypal (my payment processor). This generally worked well but sometimes cause issues when there was a discrepancy with the customers ship to address in their paypal account vs the shipping address they entered at checkout. Additionally, it didn't send automatically send shipping notices or post the tracking information back to Opencart. I searched for quite some time for an extension to integrate Paypal shipping with Opencart and couldn't find a solution.

I found the answer in Shiprush paired with stamps.com, it does cost $30.00/month, but it more than pays for itself in the amount of time saved from not having to answer so many calls and emails asking when their order shipped and when they will receive it. Here is what it does for me.

-Centralizes shipping for my various market places(Opencart, Amazon, Ebay)
-Sends an email that the order has shipped (from stamps.com)
-Changes the order status to "shipped"
-Posts an order comment showing the carrier, shipping service, and tracking number

I was very surprised, that in all my research, I never learned about this system. I did have to make a few changes to their php files on my server to make it work just the way I wanted, but they were simple. I made the tracking number a hyperlink to the shipping page, and I selected "notify comment" on the comment post to ensure that the tracking number is visible to the customer when they view their order history.

I was a little concerned about the company who runs shiprush because I couldn't find much info on them. They were affiliated with stamps.com which was about the only thing that gave me hope in the company. Their customer support is very good, I called them a half dozen times while setting up the system on my site and each person I talked to actually had a clue about how the system worked, even had a basic understanding of the programming behind the system (I mentioned the PHP code changed I had made to modify their database entries and they understood what I was saying). I have had a good experience with them so far, and have faith that they will continue to provide good customer support.

In conclusion, during the last 2 weeks that we have been using it we have had our shipping related customer support call cut by probably 80%, spend less time shipping items, and don't have issue with orders going to the wrong address. To me, proper tracking information is really a must have component of any online shopping experience, I'm glad I finally figured out how to do it with opencart.

You can find shiprush that works for opencart and stamps.com here
http://stamps.shiprush.com/

They seem to have support for other US carriers, but I'm not familiar with those products.

Thanks!
Clay

I've heard about shiprush though don't use them myself - cannot see paying another $30 a month for this service. I use stamps.com and just copy/paste my shipping address into their software, then copy/paste the delivery confirmation number for USPS in the tracking mod I added to my store so a customer can view and click on the tracking number in their order history to track their shipment. Easy peasy and only paying stamps.com's monthly fee instead of the extra.

BTW, if you use Quickbooks, stamps.com has a free extension to let you print shipping labels directly from it so you can eliminate the copy/paste of the shipping info that way as well.

What do you pay for your stamps.com account? If I were just using Opencart that may be an option for me, but this makes it much easier to process shipping with the three marketplaces I sell on.