The Tayler Corporation Treatise on Shipping A Thousand Packages
Posted October 29th, 2008 by Howard TaylerFour times now I’ve released a book using the “open pre-orders, then ship ‘em all out at once” method. Credit for the system actually working goes to my wife, Sandra.
This time around she blogged each phase of the process. The process isn’t perfect, but it’s getting fairly refined. For Schlock Mercenary: The Teraport Wars we packed and shipped over 1000 packages between 9:00am and 3:00pm on a Thursday, and that included some pretty complex orders – two books (one sketch, one regular), some magnets, and a t-shirt, for example.
The blog entries are here for your enjoyment and potential edification.
Phase 1: Collecting orders
Phase 2: Sorting
Phase 3: Inventory preparation
Phase 4: Printing Postage
Phase 5: Packaging and Mailing
(A note for Webcomics Weekly fans: we’re using Stamps.com instead of Endicia because we’ve been using Stamps.com for two years now, and the Endicia promotion began while Sandra was printing postage. We might look into Endicia, but we’re both reluctant to mess with a system that appears to be working.)
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October 29th, 2008 at 6:44 pm
You’ve mentioned that your store app isn’t geared toward mailing lists. But you’ve also mentioned that you can download a CSV. Can’t you upload that to excel and sort it there? Or if you tell me what are the batch export options you might be able to even import it on a database and automate most of of the work.
October 29th, 2008 at 7:59 pm
I can download address data to a CSV. I can’t download order contents by line item, which is one of the parameters I use for sorting. If I could do that, then yes the sorting would me much easier. Also, once I’ve downloaded the information into a CSV, I lose the ability to use the information the print invoices. The paper invoices are critical to making sure that the correct items go into each order. Having the information sorted electronically only helps me if I can then print invoices from the sorted information.
Short version: The software is not set up to do what I want it to do. I’ve jerry-rigged a solution that works, but is time intensive for me.
October 29th, 2008 at 8:30 pm
Awesome. If you have one of these affairs in the neighborhood of May – July ‘09, we’ll do our best to become a small part of it.
I assume you can recommend something in the Motel 6 / Super 8 level of price/quality for lodging near the center of things?
D.
October 30th, 2008 at 10:59 am
I’m really surprised that you can’t download the invoice line items for each order. That information has to be stored somewhere and the manual and knowledge base (which I just quickly googled for, I have no personal experience with the software) indicate that you can download information from any table in the store database. There has to be some kind of invoice or line-item table that would contain that information that you could download it from.
Of course, said information is probably in a separate table from customer addresses and is linked through a relational field (probably a customer id number). As a result, to get all the information needed for an invoice in one place, you’d probably have to construct a SQL query that would look at all the right tables for each bit of information (http://store.volusion.com/kb_results.asp?ID=173 shows how to set up a basic one table query).
If you have (or download) OpenOffice and use their Base application to duplicate the store database on your home computer (a series of Export/Import operations for each table) then you’d be able to play around with the queries until you got what you wanted (Base has a builtin Query editor that doesn’t require you to know SQL, but which will translate your query into SQL for you). Then it’s just a matter of using the query to control an Export operation from volusion. Microsoft Access can probably do this too, but I don’t use it, so I don’t know for sure.
I must say, however, I’m impressed with the sheer amount of work that goes into this. You are to be congratulated for your hard work.
October 30th, 2008 at 2:53 pm
I use both Stamps.com and Endicia, Endicia is better for International Orders (ie custom forms). Where Endicia shines is the ability to work with Volusion, where you can export and print out all your needed postage doing some neat automation via Volusion’s API http://store.volusion.com/kb_results.asp?ID=382
Because of my setup for shipping it won’t work for me, unfortunately.
October 31st, 2008 at 10:57 am
There is an old saying – if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it! It sounds as if you are both of that mind.
I can remember far too many ‘this is a much better system’ cases that weren’t, including one that went into four variations – all of which failed to translate the data over from the previous version! Believe me typing in the same data four times is a soul destroying exercise!
Incidentally the fourth version could not produce an accurate report, we had to use a spreadsheet to get the true numbers!
October 31st, 2008 at 3:45 pm
childbook: As it turns out, Stamps.com will do everything Endicia does in terms of Volusion interoperability. The only difference is that Endicia put up a nice page explaining how to do it.
Both have the problem that the order information field doesn’t export. It’s a Volusion issue, not a Stamps.com or Endicia issue. Which means that until Volusion fixes it, or we switch storefronts, we’re stuck with the manual sorting.
October 31st, 2008 at 9:52 pm
oh my gods, Howard……I haven’t stopped laughing for the past 5 minutes straight. I’m still laughing. I may need to find an oxygen machine for myself I’m laughing so hard from today’s (Saturday) strip. You are awesome man. Keep it up. LOL. Aaand Snap. Lol.
November 1st, 2008 at 1:20 pm
Not to get off topic, but the last panel of the ?November 1st episode would make a nice poster. Snap! Want to sell me one?
Jake Ahz
November 1st, 2008 at 2:26 pm
two points…
1.) we all must have been very good to get a Sunday Strip on a Saturday… what does it mean?? is this an omen??
2.) for some reason, on the last panel, I thought ‘John Wayne’; the posture made me think of his foot dragging strut…
November 1st, 2008 at 8:30 pm
I was just trying to get over the weird creepy pedophile vibe I got. But that’s probably just me.
November 1st, 2008 at 8:31 pm
Love the new uniform though. Now THAT is a Captain!
November 2nd, 2008 at 6:07 pm
Wow on your process, I just read through it. Your definitely pushing stamps.com to it’s limits. I am curious on the Volusion side of the process.
I use stamps.com for domestic because it’s easier to use, and Endicia for overseas because it has a label that is integrated with the customs form for 1st class. I got so tired of cutting out the customs form and taping it on the box in the previous version.
Some tips I read in the Volusion Forums that may help (my volume is not big enough for me to use these yet):
1. You can upload a file to change the status to shipped and send the confirmation E-Mail. Person used Endicia.
2. You can upload a file with the tracking information. Person used Endicia.
3. You can also automate the foreign orders more with Endicia. Person was using a graphic for the signature, but I don’t think that is needed with the new version.
If you use a mail merge, you can also get the invoice information printed on a label (good and bad about this). Combine the information from a couple tables downloaded separately using Access, or for the more technical SQL query.
For more automation, if you have a live rate per item for shipping then you can print directly in a batch, but then your batch process is good for your process.
I did not realize stamps.com had a $250 limit. I just checked, and Endicia allows me to buy $500 and I don’t know if there is an account limit for how much postage I can have in there.
November 3rd, 2008 at 8:28 am
childbook: Thank you for all the info and details on Endicia. That was all stuff I didn’t know. It sounds like I need to take a much more in depth look at Endicia.