BUG - state required for countries that don't have states

[RobC]

Pretty obvious bug

[CaraAdmin]

Hello RobC!

Thank you for your post. I looked into this for you and didn't think it would be a bug. If the state field is a requirement for a shipment, it would be the carrier, not ShipStation, that requires this. I can understand how confusing it can be if the country doesn't have a state. I would contact support@shipstation.com and give them the list of countries you have issues with. 

Happy Shipping!

-Cara

[RobC]

Hi Cara,

Thanks for the response. I did email shipstation support but they don't seem to understand the issue.

It's not a carrier specific problem. Shipstation itself requires a state be entered for all shipments. You can't get past the address entry screen without entering a state regardless of whether or not you have a carrier selected.  USPS and UPS do not require states for countries that do not have them.

[CaraAdmin]

Hello RobC!

Thank you for the reply! I reached out to support and got someone who will contact you to get this figured out. If this is not a bug, then we will be able to log it as a feature request!

Thank you and happy shipping!

-Cara

[cy]

It's a common bug we encounter frequently. For instance, Singapore is a country that doesn't have states.

[RobC]

Yeah many countries don't.  Are your orders imported via the API from another system?  I don't use Shopify myself, but I see that Shopify's shopping cart doesn't even have a state field for countries that do not have states, so I'm curious how those orders would be imported into Shipstation & what happens when you do an edit in Shopify before shipping.  I believe an order can be created via the API without the state field, but it seems that an UPDATE via the API fails without a state.  So in our case, our orders are created correctly but when we make an API call from our order processing system to set the package weight, dimensions, etc it fails without a state.  

The response I received from shipstation support today was that this isn't a bug and that it's a carrier requirement, which doesn't make any sense at all. It simply is not a carrier requirement.  FedEx, UPS, USPS, etc do not require you to enter address information that doesn't exist 🙂