Shipping With FreightDesk Online

1. How to capture the cost of shipping on orders placed online.
2. How to ship the order, including how to create the shipping label (or Bill Of Lading in the case of LTL freight), schedule the carrier to pick up the shipment, and update the customer with the tracking number.

Quoting apps, like the ones available from Eniture Technology, provide a solution for the first challenge. What are your options for the second challenge?

Option 1 – The carrier’s website: You can log into the carrier’s website and manually enter all the relevant information. Carrier websites are free to use since the carrier makes money when you use them to deliver an order. However, if you have more than a handful of orders each day, this approach is time-consuming and ripe for data entry errors, which can be costly to correct.

Option 2 – E-commerce Platform: Some e-commerce platforms, like Shopify, offer competitive rates for postal companies like the US Postal Service and parcel companies like UPS and DHL. But if you ship with another provider or have more than a low-to-moderate number of daily orders, you’ll find these offerings clunky and woefully inefficient. These options also require that the personnel responsible for the shipping activity be given access to the e-commerce store. That can be a concern for some businesses.

Option 3 – Cloud-based Shipping Platforms: The next step up in capability is cloud-based shipping systems that will connect to your online store and retrieve the details of your orders, thereby eliminating the need for much of the manual data entry. Many of these shipping systems have arrangements with postal and parcel carriers that are on par with the options available through the e-commerce platform. These systems excel in terms of the efficiency of the fulfillment process. That translates into a much higher volume of shipments per unit of time. These systems are relatively inexpensive, and the reduction in the amount of labor and time it takes to ship orders pays dividends.

Option 4 – FreightDesk Online: FreightDesk Online (freightdesk.online) is also a cloud-based shipping system. It enjoys all of the benefits of other cloud-based offerings but expands the solution in two ways:

1. It uses the detailed information collected by Eniture Technology’s quoting apps, such as the packaging solution and the additional services included in the shipping option chosen when the order was placed. The result is a more detailed, comprehensive data exchange with the e-commerce store, further eliminating manual data entry compared to other cloud-based shipping platforms.
2. It provides merchants access to more than two dozen LTL freight providers, in addition to the typical postal and parcel integrations offered by other cloud-based solutions.

These expanded capabilities deliver you closer to true “click-and-ship” shipping than any other alternative, whether shipping with a postal carrier, a parcel carrier, or an LTL freight provider.