Hello,
I need help with a problem we are having with Amazon causing us to have Seller Performance Issues. I can't determine whether it's a user error or a glitch in the CA software. Let me do my best to explain the situation.
My boss doesn't first use CA to update order fulfilment to indicate it's been shipped, rather he goes directly to amazon and does it there and then goes into CA and updates it there. (Sometimes a couple days later)
He states, the reason for this duplicated effort on his part, is that he can print his postage labels in Amazon and can't in CA, when he prints postage in Amazon , then Amazon considers it shipped. .Since Amazon doesn't echo back that information to CA, he later has to update the CA orders with the tracking and ship date info. He goes into the invoice details and edits the date shipped but as I said prior, he doesn't update CA until many days later.
For example, the product sales on the 1st of March, he creates the postage label on the 3rd of March in Amazon and ships (amazon considers it shipped as soon as he creates label) but he doesn't go into CA until the 10th of March to update the record that it's been shipped. On the 10th, he updates the record in CA by editing the ship date to the 3rd of March and assumes that all is good to go. Well, the feed goes out on the 10th and I believe it overrides his Amazon ship date information. I'm not sure if CA is giving Amazon the feed date of the 10th rather than the ship date that he edited in CA invoice details. Or is it Amazon that grabs the feed date and not the edited date.
I'm really guessing as to what could be happening.
I would love it if someone could tell me if there is anyway to first avoid his need to duplicate his efforts in both Amazon and CA.
Secondly if that's not possible how do we resolve this problem of the Amazon ship date being overriden without him having to update both within the same day before a feed goes out.
Thanks Brenda
Tell your boss to not be so cheap!
We use a company called Endicia to print postage. It's software on a desktop (we use endicia professional). You can map fields from the order exports from CA to fill the fields in the software. We pull up each order one at a time after it's packaged and then print postage. At the end of the day we get a file out of the Endicia software and then extract the data we need with excel, to create a file to upload to CA. Setup takes 3 minutes and end of day process takes 5 minutes. We also have an integration with UPS WorldShip with the same sort of setup. UPS and Endicia provide great support with getting setup!
It looks as though CA has made it easier then when we originally set it up. Try this link:
https://ssc.ChannelAdvisor.com/howto/create-shipping-labels-endicia
Good Luck!
Peter K
Thank you for the information, I forwarded the link to my boss. I'm afraid that it's not going to be the cost factor for him as much as it's going to be the fact that it's another software system for him to learn. I'm still curious why the date in the CA order did not override the feed date it was sent on. I will probably have to open a ticket if support doesn't see this post. Again Thank you for the info. Brenda
Brenda,
His action of coming into ChannelAdvisor later does submit a second ship confirmation to Amazon on that later date, regardless of the date he sets in CA Amazon reads the message as the day it was submitted. If you have no reason to use ChannelAdvisor for indicating these items as shipped for the purpose of telling Amazon is there any reason he must set them as shipped in the system (eg. other downstreams in your accounting departments)? If not he can avoid that step and just stick to working manually on Amazon, although then the two systems are out of sync and ChannelAdvisor cannot tell you if you have any past due orders, but it could save his time. If you need the data for downstream processes we can look if there is a way to stop sending those specific ship confirms - best to open a support case to investigate. Lastly as suggested there are many order platforms that integrate with ChannelAdvisor to print the shipping labels that may be more efficient for your business.
-Jennifer
Thank you so much, the logic programed makes total sense. I will advise him to look at intragrating a shipping software and to change the workflow. While I have your attention, I'd like to ask another question, let me know if you would prefer if I start a new thread.
I've been struggling with exporting ebay store category information in order to use to upload new ads, it only exports one of the store categories and I want my new ads to have both the category assignments available.
In summary, I'm trying to create a new ads using a bulk upload, I can use the same ebay store categories that I've used with that inventory before but I can't find a way to capture both the store category one and two in an export, I would use these to create and upload my new ads.
I hope I explain that well enough.. Thanks Brenda
By the way, just want to say I love this forum, everyone is so good at helping!
I ran into the same issue about a year or so ago. The reply that I got was basically that the system does not support the export of eBay 2nd category. In the past EBay would only allow one eBay store category per auction, and when they increased that to 2 CA expanded the submission of the additional category but did not expand their system to export that field. CA considered it a very low priority issue.
In general if you uploaded your ads to begin with then you should be able to access those old files. If not, you'll have to reassign the 2nd eBay store category manually. Though you may be able to export the data from eBay with one of their file exchange tools. You may consider archiving all of the files that you upload to CA on your desktop.
Good luck!
Peter K
Brenda,
If your boss is worried about learning another software system, then he is in the wrong business unfortunately. That said, I too worry about having to change a procedure and how that change is going to work. I see it as trying to change a tire while the truck is moving.
Endicia professional is what we use and it's worked well for us for years. We also use a product called ShipWorks by Interraptive (www.shipworks.com). If you ship more than 100 packages per day, then I would recommend looking into.
ShipWorks is a client program you download to your shipping pc(s). It does take an hour or so to initially set up (they have free support). You'll then have to connect your account to CA (which takes time for them to respond) and to Endicia or Stamps or UPS Worldship or any shipping method available.
Once that is done, orders are automatically downloaded from CA into ShipWorks at a chosen interval. Your person who does the shipping can then either key/scan in each order or have the lablels printed in batch (assuming the weights, addresses, etc. are all in check).
For us, we key in the order and choose either Endicia (US Post) or UPS. We then select the weight and method and the shipping label is printed.
The delivery confirmation or tracking number is automatically sent to ShipWorks which then automatically sends this information along with ship date to CA. CA then sends the information to Amazon, eBay, etc.
What took time to update Amazon each day or every few days, is now an instant and done process. To boot, you now have a system that records every shipping transaction.
The efficiency and time saved is well worth the time and effort in looking into and setting up a shipping system like this.
Jim Jennings
Peter's right about the second store category export. If you have your old files then you already have the information. If you're not sure what's there, you can always send an update on everything, using _DELETE_ where you want to remove any value that might have been there before.
Thanks everyone for your comments, very helpful!!!