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What makes you feel you are outgrowing this solution?

What are the challenges you are seeing with customization?

Dawn

I feel similar.  We use Starship with MAS 90 4.2 shipping about 60-100 packages today and it works but it's frustrating how many buttons you have to press to ship an order.  Most of the button presses are due to MAS though and not Starship.  Here's the workflow for shipping an order: Go to Shipping Data Entry in MAS, enter sales order number, hit the ship complete button (unless you have to backorder items or enter serial numbers...all manual), go to tab 2, hit the starship button, enter package weight (or use a scale), hit next package if you have another box and enter weight, now hit "save" which prints your UPS label(s). You then have to hit "ok" on the tracking numbers screen then hit accept on the shipping data entry screen then hit print on the "print packing list" screen then hit print on the "invoice printing" screen, then (and this just kills me), you have to hit "Ok" when MAS tells you to "remove your invoices and replace with paper".  Ugh. Now you are ready for the next shipment.

We want something more automated.  Maybe one of the barcode solutions?

As far as the electronic invoices, we are going to use Knowledgesync for doing that because I think it's more customizable.  I just finished doing sales order confirmation emails with Knowledgesync (in HTML) and now will be working on invoices.

-Brian.

Thanks!  With the current upgrade to 4.2, our present solution using Barsa to link to UPS Worldship became much less efficient because of the time it takes Barsa to populate the UPS table with the information to import to the labels.  They are working on this for the next version.  However, we have to manually make changes such as bill to receiver and entering the account number, etc.  And the only thing written back is the tracking number.

For those issues ShipGear seems to be an easy solution.  However, we are also still generating all invoices prior to creating labels, and all of this activity is done in the front office.  Because Starship initiates the invoicing from the warehouse, it would mean a big change in our processes as far as charging cards, importing orders, QC, etc.

We would like to make a change that will increase automation, control for human error and position us for efficient growth.  That will probably include electronic invoicing, which is challenging for us because we have numerous customer specific requirements.

Thank you! 

Greetings!

One suggestion I would like to make here is to consider using the Bar Code module and its "behind the scenes" integration with StarShip.  The workflow goes like this:  Print the picking sheets of the orders you plan to ship with barcodes on them. Use the handheld to scan items as they are picked and verify them against the picking sheet by scanning it as well. Then place the item in a shipping box.  Once a box is filled, the handheld operator clicks a button to select box 2 and continues the shipment. When the whole shipment is picked and boxed, the handheld operator ends that order and places the boxes in the Shipping area of your warehouse. He then and moves on to the next picking sheet. Meanwhile, the shipper goes into Shipping Data Entry using a MAS 90 or 200 desktop. Since the boxes are all packed and ready to go with the quantities already entered, all he needs to do is click the StarShip link and ship the box(es). If you want, he can also print the packing sheets and drop them into the boxes before sealing them up and affixing the shipping labels.  I believe there may even be an alternative workflow where the StarShip integration and label printing can be done from a handheld too, but am not certain of that. For more info, contact www.scanco.com or [email protected]

This workflow streamlines the process and helps ensure against operator error because of the validation on the front end of the picking process. The handheld makes a nice beep when the item on the pick sheet and the picked item's label match and makes a not so nice sound when they don't match so its easy to tell when they are out of synch.  And the Scanco folks can demonstrate what the costs of not solving this problem is and how that impacts your entire organization.  Good luck!

We were using Barsa Shipping and loved it.  We would enter a sales order number.  This was the key import for our UPS computer and customer data and shipping information imported into this.  Once the package was shipped we could go

directly to the invoice data entry and import freight charges and ups tracking numbers back in to Mas90 and print this on invoices.  Life was good.  Then we updated to Mas90 4.4.  We can not reach anyone as Barsa.  We are using a trial version of ship gear.   The previous procedure does not work.  We can not write back to the invoice file.  I was told to use Shipping  Data Entry.  This does not seem to work after an order has been shipped.  I want the tracking number on my invoices.

Hi Vickie,

I am not familiar with Barsha Shipping.  Are you saying that you started shipping the order in the barsa app and it would create an invoice for you?  In the Barsa app, is that where you specified which items were shipping and what quantities?

You can use shipping data entry to scan an order number (or key it in) and indicate what quantities shipped on what items.  Once you save the shipment it can then automatically print a packing list.  You could take that packing list and feed the invoice number (shipping #) into UPS Worldship and have it pull up the ship to address, ship via method, etc. and ship the package.  Then you have the packing list all ready to put on the box along with the label. 

When you do end of day, UPS can be set up to automatically write a file of freights and tracking numbers.  You can use VI to import these into your invoices and then print and post them.  Another option is to use Crossware, a BigLouie favorite, which UPS can set up for you to feed the freight and tracking back to MAS 90/200 on a shipment by shipment basis instead of all at once at end of day.

Dawn

I have been looking all week and finally found Barsa.  They were bought out by ISM.  Finally reached them and an upgrade is on the way.  How the procedure works is we type a sales order in Mas90.  The sales order number is then imported into Barsa pulling all the ship to address and ship data.  Once the order is shipped it is immediately exports to a file and Mas90 can pull from that file the tracking number and freight charges.  We us the invoice data entry to import back into
as90.   We have no problem with it at all and the imformation is obtain immediately. 

You don't need the barcode module to implement using barcodes with shipping data entry.  Also, handheld scanners can be quite expensive.  You can implement barcoding in a much more cost effective way using a little utility called Azalea Code 128 Barcode tools (http://www.code128barcodes.com/software/).  This allows you to add barcodes to your picking sheets.  Our picking sheets include barcodes not just for the order # and item #s, but even the keystrokes the shipper needs to use like next package, save, etc..   We use an inexpensive keyboard wedge scanner which plugs into a USB port.  Then we also barcode all of our items.  This setup allows our shipping clerk to move through orders lickity-split, hardly ever having to touch the keyboard except for certain exceptions.