The Recap:
Your Questions Answered
Q: Basic Question but how do we remove the ship station logo from the shipping/tracking page?
ShipStation: We do not currently offer a way to remove the ShipStation logo from the Branded Tracking Page.
Q: I would like to know more about Inventory management between BigCommerce and ShipStation. Like how can you automate that, not just a manual process.
ShipStation: The answer to this one is a little bit complicated. The short answer here is that there is not a way to automate or sync stock count from BigCommerce natively in ShipStation without a third party. However, we do have options that will allow you to view existing inventory from external inventory sources.
External Inventory
Setting this up will allow you to view your external inventory from the Order Details directly.
View Total Available Inventory Counts
Setting this up will populate the Total Available column in your Products Grid.This feature is supported for the following inventory sources.
Q: I opened a second shop and am getting ready to develop our eCommerce. Is it possible to have two separate eCommerce shops/sites feed into the same ShipStation account? Thanks!
ShipStation: Yes, you can have as many stores connected as you would like even if they are different stores using the same selling channel as a host.
Connect a Store
Q:Is there a way to send 1 email shipment notification to customers with multiple tracking numbers/shipments per order?
ShipStation: If you are using our Multi Package Shipment Feature, each individual package will have its own tracking number and label, but there will be a master tracking number that will track all included packages. The customer’s notification email will contain the Master tracking number. If you are not using this feature and are shipping multiple shipments at different times, then it will only send one tracking number per email notification.
Creating Multi-Package Shipments
Q: I am a new user to ShipStation. Only 3 labels were created in 10 days. Is there a pull-down for WALLET showing a running list of shipped orders and their costs, leaving an Available Balance. I did receive an email on Sun. 2/13/22 listing my 2 first items shipped. However, your available balance should be accessible on a daily basis, so you don't "break the bank" and "go negative".
ShipStation: You can view your balance and reports under Settings> Carriers & Fulfillment. To see your reports you can click on the gear icon next to your carrier services account and then click “View Reports”. This will show you all postage purchases and carrier adjustments directly from Stamps.
Also if you are wanting to see balance history from within ShipStation instead you can navigate to Insights>reports> Account Balance History and choose the provider you want to view.
Insights Reports Accounting
ShipStation Carrier-Services (SCS)
Q: Any tips on making the shipping carrier automation rules more seamless?
SkuVault: We have automated picklist printouts and wavepicking session filters that can quickly identify and group orders by carrier for picking.
Q: Everything about inventory -- how to organize new products, how to account for sales from craft sales, and how to get usable reports for sales by product, revenue by product, etc.
SkuVault: Organizing new products: If using SV it doesn't matter how you organize them in your warehouse (if that is where you meant). We use a dynamic location system so when a slot is empty you fill it, record where it is and place the product there. No need to group items together since you have an accurate record of where everything is.
Account for sales from craft sales: Not sure where these sales are taking place, I'm assuming two places 1. Etsy 2. Craft Shows.
ETSY: Sales will be accounted for in whatever system is pulling in that information. SV can pull in sale info from ETSY to record it.
Craft Shows: For ease of record keeping it is best to track the inventor you take to the show, then track the inventory you bring back. The difference is sold. If you price using a SkuSystem it's easy to record SKU and Price of each item sold, doesn't take much time in person, can be added later to track down to the SKU
Usable reports: These are available in the SV system by using the variety of reports we offer. The sales report can be manipulated in multiple ways as can most of our reports.
Q: How do you handle inventory between multiple website platforms that don’t work together? I.e. Shopify, Etsy, wholesale markets.
SkuVault: Since SV is the center of truth for your inventory count it doesn't matter that these sites don't work together because SV will update inventory counts to each one based on each sale from any/all platforms. EX: Sell an item on Shopify, inventory updates then updates ALL marketplaces with the new count. SO that one sale creates a trigger to update: eBay, ETSY, Amazon, and anywhere else connected. FYI, SV has an open API to connect nearly any Marketplace that we do not have a native connection to.
Q: How do you keep accurate track of your inventory as your business grows and when do you know to buy more stock so that you’re not running out or over-buying stock? Essentially, how do you determine what products to re-up on and when to maintain streamlined customer conversion?
SkuVault: With the SV reporting system we can guide you on which products are selling, where they are selling, and when to restock. You determine your stock levels, we monitor the rest.
Q: What's the greatest tool that has allowed you to grow and scale your small business?
Patrick: When we incorporated SKUvault and shipstation into the business, it set the foundation for scale. Inventory management and streamlined shipping was a big pain point when we started, how both were handled before was incredibly inefficient. Now we can run lean but still service and scale customers nationwide and large retailers.
Q: What are some major milestones you’ve had that you could reflect on?
Patrick: The biggest milestone to date was our launch at Whole Foods Market. That's a very tough retailer to get into. We're homegrown in Austin, so that was a huge goal of mine.
Q: What is one thing you would do differently if you started your company today?
Patrick: There's a lot, but if I could hone on doing one thing differently today it would be focusing on SEO. It's such a long game to rank, but it's free traffic. There's no shortcut to ranking, so you need to start asap. We started way too late putting focus and resources towards SEO.
Q: How has ShipStation impacted your business?
Patrick: It relieved so many pain points I had in the beginning. In the beginning, I was literally inputting online orders manually into the USPS website. Now everything pulls in automatically from our website flawlessly. For the wholesale side, ShipStation saves all our vendors so we can easily create shipments. It also pulls in all your products from our side to easily add products to wholesale orders.
Learn more about Fitppl here: https://fitppl.com/
Get in Touch with SkuVault here: SkuVault Contact Form
... View more