Add inventory tracking for packaging materials

[cw1]

We keep track of our product inventory elsewhere, but use ShipStation to ship our products and therefore would like ShipStation to keep inventory of the boxes we use to ship products. We use the preset packages and think it's only natural to know how many we have used and how many we have left so we dont over-order boxes or know which box sizes we use more so we can place orders for them!

[dbcooperandco]

Today we use Shipstation's workflow engine to make shipping box/envelope decisions for us. As an example, if an order comes in that is below 13oz, it would go into a "custom 13oz box" and if it's between 14-16oz it goes into another, and on and on. This has become a fully baked solution for us, and it's working great. Where we stumble on this is that we have no place to manage our shipping MATERIALS. Not inventory, per se, but actually the count of the boxes, tape, bubble wrap, and such. Maybe it's not worth managing, but for us, if we run out of a certain type of box our shipping costing model changes and it costs us money. So, watching these as products becomes essential. What I'd like to see is some why for this to happen: - An order comes in and if it matches a tag/filter/criteria then add a "shipping product" to the order. Then, have Shipstation itself manage the inventory count for these "shipping products," where when the shipping product gets added to an order the shipping inventory would decrement accordingly. It's important to make the distinction between a PRODUCT and a SHIPPING PRODUCT in this example. Products would be "For Sale" items, items that have channel relationships and can't be modified today. These new "Shipping Products" would be simple parts that we just need to be able to have an at a glance inventory count on. They would be local to Shipstation, and shouldn't have any channel relationships. Shipstation is our shipping application; it makes sense for it to be the manager of shipping parts. If you kept it local to Shipstation and made it a separate module (again, keeping the separation between a product and a shipping product) then it feels like most of the component logic and functions exist in Shipstation already.

[hello161]

I LOVE ShipsStation and the automation of printing everything in one click. You have literally added years to my life! So I have an online only storefront that sells a limited number of 12x18'' graphic art prints (all the same at this point). Keeping up with the actual inventory is easy. The part that is not easy is keeping up with shipping supplies and when to reorder. I wish I could enter my supply amounts and then put an automation filter on orders that would update my supply count as the orders are filled. For example, when 1 print is ordered I use: -1 thermal label, -3 do not bend stickers, -2 pieces of cardboard, -1 clear sleeve, -a logo sticker, -a sticker with the fine print, -4 inches of scotch tape -5 ft and 4 inches of packing tape. I order all of these items in different quantities, from different vendors at different times. It would be heavenly if I always knew how many of each I had on hand. Let me know if this is a possibility in the future for your app! Thanks for listening :) -Lisa Mosow

[hello161]

I requested this too. Well said! My shipping products are much more complicated than my actual products!

[sean27]

This is an excellent idea! Nothing worse than running out of shipping boxes/tape/packing peanuts after an abnormal spike in sales. It would be nice to have a real time view of shipping supplies right in the app that we use for shipping...seems like a no brainer. My love/hate relationship with ULINE would be more less stressful too.

[thomas6]

This is a great idea, currently i manage our supplies via an excel sheet. this would be really helpful

[stevelaba]

Since the weight of the product we ship vary we are only interested in Shipstation keeping track of the inventory of the boxes used to ship our products. So when we select a pre determined shipping type and the box that is used we just want to keep an eye on our shipping box levels. Steve

[altcherg]

Great option to implement!!!

[sales372]

This would be great! Especially since we can input our box types, if nothing else this should be easy to keep track of. When a packaging type is selected to ship it removes it from the inventory.

[jr_johnson]

Yes, absolutely. Since ShipStation already allows for rules where I automate what dimensions and weight for the order, being able to account for the box/materials being used would be a dream. I order hundreds of boxes at a time, sometimes over a thousand; setting an alert to reorder...it just takes that much more stress. As always, ShipStation is awesome and thanks for continuing to develop such an indispensable tool.

[feedback]

Hey, everyone! Thank you for all of your helpful comments! I might have one solution if you're having trouble tracking your packages. If you use carrier-specific packages, you can go to Insights > Reports > Shipped Orders (located under "Raw Data Export". This report has a column header named "Package Type" that records what you select as "Package" when shipping. For example, if you use USPS Medium Flat Rate Box, the export will say "MFRB". You can quickly put Package Type into a pivot table to count how many orders were shipped with carrier packages. This won't quite work with your custom packages since the Package Type will say "Pkg". The dimensions are recorded, however, although this would require even more legwork on your part. What do you think? Or does this not help so much because are a majority of your packages custom sized?