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Has anyone used the Acumatica Smart Shipment feature that provides an integration to UPS WorldShip and FedEx Ship Manager via the program that you install on a Windows computer?
It looks pretty cool and I would think it eliminates the need for a 3rd party application like StarShip in some situations.
Prior to Acumatica 2019 R1 you had to have the Pick/Pack/Ship functionality to use this, but it looks like Pick/Pack/Ship is included out-of-the-box in Acumatica 2019 R1.
I'm especially curious to know if anyone is using this in a live Acumatica environment.
Here is a video overview of Smart Shipment:
I would love to know more, as well. I have a customer for whom this would be outstanding, but they (and I) are daunted by its being listed as Pre-Release software on the Acumatica Portal.
I had an exchange with Acumatica last October and was told the following:
I can confirm the tool is still in Pre Release and we are updating in case of any new version or update you will be informed on the same page.
This does not mean the tool has any issue and we have many partners and customers using it. However, since the tool is not fully test yet we consider it as Pre Release.
Personally, I'm not too concerned with Pre Release here because it looks to me like it functions like a macro and just copies data into the graphical fields in the shipping application. In other words, it doesn't look like a backend API that, in my opinion, would be more susceptible to break.
I am not concerned either, but the customer just doesn't like the sound of it. 🙂
Agreed, it doesn't look good.
Google has an interesting take on Beta software:
https://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/07/google-apps-is-out-of-beta-yes-really.html
We just went live with Acumatica this month, and we're using the Smart Shipment Integration. In theory, it's exactly what we want; however we're encountering a fair amount of issues.
- It does not consistently bring over Collect numbers from Acumatica. The help file "SmartShip Integration Help V2.pdf" file I'm looking it does not show it as a mapped field; however, I'm told that it definitely does bring over Collect information. Sometimes.
- There is no way to custom-map fields, and the integrator we're working with says this is impossible. We NEED our Sales Order, Shipment Number, and Customer Purchase Order to show up on the printed label. Custom field mapping would allow us to do this. Unfortunately, this isn't allowed which sucks.
- It is apocalyptically slow to bring information over. A quick typer could fill in the information more quickly in some instances. The write-back speed is fine. The populating of WorldShip is not.
These issues have us looking at 3rd party integration services. This Smart Shipment Integration Tool would be perfect for us if it wasn't so bloody slow and allowed custom-mapped fields to allow us to print Customer Purchase Order, Sales Order Number, and Shipment Order Number on the labels.
Acumatica, please make this happen. It seems silly that it is not default behavior to allow us to bring this information over. We could deal with the slow speed if it brought all the information over.
SmartShip-Integration-Help-V2.pdf
Your comments are very detailed and extremely helpful for those looking to implement a shipping integration. Thank you for sharing your experience. It would be wonderful in everyone in this forum would do the same on a regular basis. Just one post per person per quarter would make AUG the strongest knowledge base on Acumatica issues and ways to overcome them on the web.
Also, Matt, your experience with speed issues and the desire to allow custom field mapping would make a great recommendation on the Acumatica Ideas page. You can use the below link to access the site and share your thoughts. You may be pleasantly surprised to learn how many past ideas have found their way into the product.
https://feedback.acumatica.com/?project=ACU
Cheers!
@shawn-slavin
Thanks Shawn--I will definitely post it onto the feedback section you linked.
"Apocalyptic" speed issues was a bit of hyperbole, but our shipping guy just showed me that he could type the information in quicker as a demonstration of his frustration, so I went with the dysphemism.
I'll put together an introductory post when I get a chance. This go-live has been 3 years in the making from discovery until now for us. We're a relatively small company, but there's 4 sister companies all on different ERP systems that we're trying to unify. My location is the first go-live, and we want to iron out as many of the issues as possible before going live at the others.
Matt,
This info is extremely helpful for me. Thank you for sharing it!
Kimberly
Interesting. I read your post as apoplectic, not apocalyptic. I have experienced similar issues with integrations. In my case, it was an outside developer consuming data from Acumatica and expecting an API call to perform similar to a native database call. Lack of early testing in a production environment resulted in people's behavior more closely relating to my interpretation. Cheers!
I started a "New Idea" on the Acumatica feedback forums for the rationale on why it would be useful to be able to link Sales Order and Customer Purchase Order to the UPS WorldShip Reference 2 and 3 fields.
We have used the built-in carrier setup integrations with UPS/Fed-Ex/Stamps.com (USPS) for our shipping labels and had a similar frustration at the lack of mapping data fields like the order number, customer PO, etc to the reference fields on the labels with the carriers. There are reference number fields on the packages tab but it is not set up to easily pull in any data without manual entry. Through a decent amount of trial and error we finally figured out a customization to default the customer PO into one of these fields but I'm surprised Acumatica does not have this built into the carrier settings to easily map data across without a customization.
@brandon Hi Brandon, we're using the ShipEngine integration and are looking for a similar customization. We'd like for the customer's PO number to fill into the Ref 1 field. Do you have any suggestions or details that you can share? Thanks!
I started a "New Idea" on the Acumatica feedback forums for the rationale on why it would be useful to be able to link Sales Order and Customer Purchase Order to the UPS WorldShip Reference 2 and 3 fields.
Thanks for all the detail Matt. Great stuff. I just voted on your feedback idea.
Is anyone still using the UPS/FedEx integration that comes with Acumatica?
My client went live with Acumatica 2019R2 in March 2020 and needed UPS integration so we opted for Shipstation based on recommendations and review of other applications. Though we've had some minor issues. it works well with the shipment portion but now we have problems with return labels. Apparently with WorldShip you can do "Call Tags" that are given to the UPS driver that does their normal shipment pickups and they will then schedule to pickup the package from the customer. All costs are charged back to us as the primary shipper. With Shipstation, you can print Return labels that are emailed directly to the client. If the customer then takes the package to a UPS shipping drop-off location or has daily UPS pickup nothing additional is charged. However, if the customer calls for a UPS pickup of that package because they are residential or do not have daily pickup services with UPS, UPS wants to charge the customer a $7-$10 fee for the pickup. This would be fine if the customer was returning something they didn't like but it's more often a case where our company shipped the wrong package and are now simply requesting a return of the package and agrees to eat the shipping costs since it is our mistake.
Up until March of this year, they have always used WorldShip as their shipping application. We were convinced not to use this as there were still issues but now it seems it may be our better option. I need to know if anyone is still using it? Has it been updated since last year? Is it still really slow? Also, I can't find anywhere to even setup a test environment for this to see if it works. We are using the Distribution edition with the eCommerce add-on. Do I need to purchase something else to be able to use the WorldShip/FedEx integration or is it simply available in my edition and needs to be enabled?
Any help would be appreciated.
@mcondon64 I would also like to know if anyone has tried using the native integration that comes with Acumatica. We have been using a shipstation integration with limited success. It seems like there should be a baked in way to ship and print shipping labels out of Acumatica- given that Acumatica can shop rates and store package in formation....
Hi Everyone
Acumatica user for last 3 years.
1. How or where can I download the Acumatica Smart Shipment integration file?
2. We have stopped using the built in UPS/Fedex integration. The key issue is that when use a non pre-defined box, Acumatica will not transmit the dims to UPS, leading to under charge and re-bill later.
Appreciate if any of you can point me to a better solution .. Worldship?
Thanks
@chrisc the integration you're asking about is here, I believe. We tried it out when we went live but it's pretty clunky and we got frequent errors. You might try the new-ish EasyPost integration. It generally works really well for us. Acumatica has been really helpful and responsive in adding features and functionality.
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