How do you dispatch orders taken on your website?

[1]

I have a website selling a small range (under 5 items) of low value products (Under £20). I currently use paypal for payments and go onto the post office website and type all the relevant customer info in and print a postage/address label. I then drop them into the local post office when I am passing as they are slightly to big to go into a post box.

When business volumes were low this was fine, however now things have started to pick up it is getting a little tetious and time consuming, it also leaves room for error when re-typing names etc.

I need my website to be able to print the address label or an invoice which I can put into a window on the front. Is there an off the shelf solution I can bolt onto my website or can anyone recommend someone who can help.

This still leaves postage, at what point does buying a franking machine become economic, is this the right solution for small packets? What other options are there?

So my question is what are my options and what is everyone else doing?

[rich1231]

Blimey..

I know your pain..

In the UK there are no good and reasonable priced Order Management Systems available. They are either very expensive (relatively) or crude and weak featured. I have spent months and months investigating the options for dozens of systems and went for an American product that we are about to have integrated flly with our new Cart software.

You need to decide exactly what you would like it to do, and think ahead... if i had decided on a spec a year ago it would have been terribly inadequate now.

We already have integration with RM and Couriers etc with our old software but its all something we have written ourselves generally. Also dont be afraid to change your workflow prcesses as you will have developed yours limited by your tech and not designed them with efficient use of time and resources in mind primarily.

[rpguk]

You can generate and print postage labels directly from paypal itself IIRC. Payment is taken from your paypal balance too. I've used it once or twice for personal stuff and it's very easy to use.

Edited to add - Information page on paypal site

Edited by rpguk on Monday 26th October 11:31

[silver.fox.2008]

Quite surprising there isn't an off the shelf solution as I'm sure this affects many on-line retailers.

[maser_spyder]

Have you tried Royal Mail Smartstamp?

Might not be the thing for you, but still easier than logging on to print postage.

[thisislife]

Ever heard of mail order works? Can be integrated with your site and do what you mentioned in regards to printing off a dispatch note/invoice.

Look at the various royal mail services to see which is best for you. It all depends on what sorts of volume your moving daily really.

[Hyperbola]

1 said:

So my question is what are my options and what is everyone else doing?

I am (trying to) sell online, but it is early days for me.

My products are mainly electronic (in the sense that I can send them by e-mail), but I also had a background requirement to be able to sell physical products too, perhaps like electronic widgets and manuals.

I don't have a wide range of products like a superstore, just things I've made myself.

I wrote myself a small e-commerce jobbie that manages all my transactions. I had to do it this way, because no other e-commerce suite would generate the electronic licence keys I use. The core server is a binary and runs on Windows/IIS, and it integrates with a shopping basket that I wrote in PHP. It's completely automated, in that the shopper comes along and buys whatever, and I don't have to do anything other than collect the accounts at the end of the month.

The invoice goes directly to the customer by e-mail, and if they bought electronic stuff then that goes by e-mail as an attachment.

Obviously, if I start selling physical objects, then I'll have to actually wrap packages or something. Anyhow, in that case the server just sends a dispatch note e-mail to a notional dispatch address which I own. All I would have to do is print off the note, put it in the package, and send the goods. The email could potentially contain anything, including labels, or whatever.

My basic plan would be to have a store room somewhere with a pile of pre-packed goods ready to accept the dispatch note.

The server deals with VAT, and postage. The postage isn't calculated though. I just assume that if the customer orders two physical items, then I'll send two packages. That way I know the postage beforehand.

I use it with RBS WorldPay, but the actual interface is in PHP, so it can be configured to connect with any credit card provider that will accept a fixed address from the merchant. I'm not interested in managing credit card numbers, and the banks aren't keen either, so the provider does that on their site, I just act on on their payment responses.

Keeping the basket contents secure (SSL/TLS/HTTP) is more about the existing site than the basket stuff, but many people are not concerned about keeping their customers baskets private.

[beakr]

Have you looked at one of the many fulfillment services out there such as Amazon's?

http://www.amazonservices.com/content/fulfillment-...

[1]

Thanks for all the feedback so far.

Surprising that there doesn't seem to be an integrated off the shelf offering.

My biggest problem is that I am not that IT savy and really don't have the time or inclination to learn enough to create something myself. Perhaps those who have created there own solutions would care to PM me if they are interested in selling me theirs.

The Paypal facility wont work as I would like to offer other payment options too. I have looked at the Smart Stamp and I cant really see how it would make things easier, I would still need to manually imput all the info for each customer.

Mail Order Works looks interesting but still doesn't cover the postage.

My other option is to out source the whole process. Do companies offering this service exsit?

A company who would take the order then pick, pack and post? If they do exist what sort of cost could I expect on a sub £20 item weighing approx 60g including the packaging?

[maser_spyder]

We do warehousing and dispatch.

Depending on volumes, you're looking at around 75p to £1 for pick, pack and dispatch. It also depends on the product and work involved in packing the items.

If it's literally put dibbler in envelope and fix label for postage, it's the cheaper end of the scale. If it's recording serial numbers and using a recorded delivery option then it's going to cost more.

Outsourcing will save you huge amounts of time, it's well worth looking in to.

[Hyperbola]

I would e-mail you back, but I can't for 24hrs because I'm new.
You might find that you can mail me, if that's allowed!
As it happens, I'm not actually new, but I posted under this alias because I didn't want to associate my business with my other alias.
I've no problems with people knowing, but I don't want it searchable on the internet.