New Feature of the Week: UPS Negotiated Rates in iabol

iabol now offers the ability to display your UPS negotiated rates when estimating rates and generating shipping labels. This new feature will help you make better decisions about your shipping, make bill reconciliation easier and help improve customer satisfaction by providing more accurate shipping rates.

Setting up your UPS negotiated rates in iabol is easy! Just go to your iabol dashboard and select “Edit Carrier” for UPS. Select “Next” in the Carrier Setup Wizard until you locate your UPS Rate Access Code. Then, all you have to do is contact your UPS Account Representative and provide them with your UPS Account Number and the UPS Rate Access Code and request that they enable Negotiated Rates to be displayed for your account. That’s it! For more info on UPS Negotiated Rates, call us at 877.847.2265.

Not using iabol yet? Simplify your shipping and start saving money today- click here for a free 30 day trial of iabol Internet shipping software.

New Feature of the Week- Easy Hardware Integration

iabol’s Easy Hardware Integration

iabol makes cutting shipping costs easy with great features like low monthly cost, UPS service included free, no maintenance fees (ever!) and money saving options like U-PIC parcel insurance- but did you know that iabol can also save your business money with its easy hardware integration?

That’s right- most likely, the hardware you already have is all you need to use iabol’s efficient, reliable shipping and label printing features. iabol supports most computers, scales and scanners.  It doesn’t matter what type of computer you have, because iabol is a web-based shipping solution and conveniently has no software to install. All you need is a compatible web browser (IE 6.0 or higher- IE is required for use with dedicated label printers, Firefox 3.0 or higher and Safari)!

Other hardware iabol supports:

• Barcode Scanners

Most keyboard-wedge barcode scanners

• Scales

Weigh Tronix

Fairbanks

Mettler Toledo

• Label Printers

Eltron*

Zebra*

Laser and Ink Jet**

*special paper stock required

**label pouches  may be required

Don’t see your hardware listed? Give us a call at 877.847.2265 and we’ll help you find out if it’s supported through iabol. Ready to get started? Click here to get 30 days of iabol free with UPS included!

Announcing iabol with U-PIC Insurance!

iabol is pleased to announce our partnership with U-PIC parcel insurance providers. We can now offer our customers a new way to save- by insuring parcels at a  considerable discount with U-PIC, directly from their iabol User page! The process is quick and simple, and users can insure any number of packages easily and at low cost. In fact, shippers can save up to 85% on shipping insurance with U-PIC, a fraction of the cost of shipping with carriers.

U-PIC has been saving time and money for companies and individual shippers since its founding in 1989. With a dedicated, professional staff of licensed insurance agents, U-PIC is always ready to assist customers with their parcel insurance needs.

U-PIC’s services are designed to insure packages and parcels while saving the customer time and money. From heavy volume shippers to individual buy-online shipments, U-PIC offers low competitive rates, as well as state-of-the-art methods of purchase, reporting claims filing and premium payment. U-PIC makes filing claims fast and easy- customers can file by email, fax or mail and get a decision on the claim in 7-10 business days.

If you are already an iabol 2.0 customer, getting started is easy. U-PIC’s system is integrated with iabol, so you can ship and insure all at once. Just go to your iabol account page and add the U-PIC module. Once you enter your shipper information, you will receive your new U-PIC policy number and instructions for claims filing instantly- and that’s it. You’re ready to start saving money and shipping insured parcels.

Why pay the high cost of carrier shipping insurance? Ship with the carrier you want and insure with U-PIC- all quickly and easily through iabol.

(Don’t have an iabol account? Get a free 30-day trial here)

UPS’s Longest-Tenured Employee Retires Today- After 63+ Years

Image via Wikipedia

In an era when the average job tenure for Americans barely stretches four years, Marty Peters is exceptional. Mr. Peters retired today from UPS as their longest-tenured employee- with 63 years, five months and 29 days of service. He joined UPS in March 1946, straight out of the Army and World War II. Mr. Peters recalls that there were 10,000 soldiers returning home at that time, and competition was fierce for employment. The 95-cent per hour delivery job was welcome.

Mr. Peters spent many years as a UPS truck driver, logging more than 1.4 million miles on his route between Detroit and Grand Rapids. Later on, he moved to a desk job helping incorrectly addressed packages reach their intended destinations. To read more about Marty Peters’ impressive career tenure, check out the UPS article here.

USPS and FedEx Renew Global Express Guaranteed Int’l Delivery Service

This week, the USPS and FedEx Express renewed their Global Express Guaranteed (GXG) international delivery service deal. GXG is a delivery service that ships to over 190 countries and territories with a date-certain guarantee. Under the Global Express Guaranteed service, customers drop off packages at post office; FedEx picks up the packages, sorts them and then handles the final delivery. GXG shipping labels and packaging feature both USPS and FedEx logos.

Get the scoop from Logistics Managment’s original article here.

iabol Feature of the Week: Endicia SCAN Form for USPS

Endicia’s SCAN (Shipment Confirmation Acceptance Notice) Form is an extremely useful tool for iabol 2.0 users who ship parcels with USPS. After closing out your parcels shipped for the day, the SCAN Form generates a customized notice which consolidates all USPS shipments for the day into one document with a barcode.

The barcode contains information about how many packages you are shipping for the day, as well as your shipper information. When a USPS driver picks up your packages (or you drop them off at the Post Office), the Postal Service scans the SCAN Form barcode and checks the number of packages against the form.

Once complete, your packages are accepted into the USPS Package Tracking System (PTS) and each tracking number now shows the date/time and ZIP5 of the acceptance process!

If you haven’t added Endicia to your list of carriers in iabol 2.0 yet, what are you waiting for? Just login and go to Shipping Site Manager⇒Add a Carrier to get started.

Don’t have an iabol 2.0 account yet? Click here to get a free 30 day trial.

President Obama Announces Ruth Y. Goldway Chairman of the Postal Regulatory Commission

Today, President Barack Obama announced Commissioner Ruth Y. Goldway to be Chairman of the Postal Regulatory Commission. She is currently serving her third term as Commissioner, which extends through November 22, 2014, and was first nominated to the Commission in April 1998 by President Bill Clinton. Commissioner Goldway succeeds Dan G. Blair.

Before joining the PRC, Commissioner Goldway enjoyed a long career in public service and consumer advocacy, including service as:

• Mayor and Council Member of Santa Monica, California
• Director of Public Affairs at California State University, Los Angeles
• Assistant to the Director of California’s Department of Consumer Affairs
• Manager of Public Affairs for the Getty Trust, the largest and education foundation in the United States

The Postal Regulatory Commission (PRC) functions to oversee the performance and accountability of the United States Postal Service. The PRC is an independent federal agency comprised of five Presidentially-appointed and Senate-confirmed Commissioners, each serving a term of six years.  The Chairman is designated by the President.

Read the entire PRC press release here.

8 Easy Ways to Save Money on Shipping Costs

Taking steps to reduce your shipping costs is a great way to save money for your business, so we’ve put together a list of 8 quick and easy ways you can save money on your business shipping. How many of these do you already use? What other tips would you recommend?

1. Take advantage of the free packaging available from carriers:

USPS-Get free Priority and Express Mail supplies from usps.com, as well as eBay co-branded boxes from ebaysupplies.usps.com. Just keep in mind that these suppiles may only be used with Priority and Express Mail services.

UPS- Get free boxes, envelopes and padded mailers from ups.com- just be sure you only use these for UPS premium services.

FedEx- Get free boxes, envelopes and padded mailers from fedex.com- just be sure you only use these only for shipping with FedEx Express.

2. Recycle supplies like Styrofoam packing peanuts, bubble wrap and cardboard mailing tubes, but be sure that anything you reuse is in good shape. A good rule of thumb is to use at least 2 inches of filler material around each item, and more for fragile items.

3. Be sure to use a shipping scale to weigh your parcels- this saves you from over or under-estimating the weight of the package, so you won’t overpay for shipping (both can result in extra charges).

4. Use the right size box- putting a small item in a big box requires more packing material and will generally cost more to ship (and it’s wasteful!).

5. If you’re shipping mulitple items to a single address, consolidate all items into one shipment. It saves money and ensures that all items are delivered at the same time.

6. Ship online! No matter which carrier you choose to ship with, it is virtually always cheaper to pack it yourself and purchase the shipping label online than going to retail brick-and-mortar store.

7. Be a savvy shipper- make sure you’re selecting the right carrier and service for your shipments. Prices vary from one carrier to another, so it pays to shop around- one easy way to utilize multiple carriers and guarantee carrier compliance is to use shipping software like iabol- you can even get a free trial of iabol for 30 days to see how it works for you.

8. Always check your statements for carrier billing errors and keep track of what you send.

Introducing iabol Feature of the Week!

If you’re a retailer, an e-tailer, an eBayer or a Yahoo! Merchant (or anyone who ships parcels for business), you know how important quick, reliable and affordable shipping software is to your bottom line. There are many good reasons to use shipping software to streamline your shipping process- check out what the Shipping Coach Mark Taylor has to say about using multiple carriers.

iabol is shipping software that can help you save time and money by offering multiple carrier choices- choose from DHL, FedEx, UPS, USPS and local consolidators. iabol is also Web-based, so you can manage multiple users in all of your locations easily. Because iabol integrates seamlessly in to your existing system, you do not need to buy additional hardware to get started. In fact, there are so many great iabol features that we’re going to highlight a new one weekly here on the blog. This week’s feature is Public and Private Address Books:

Public and Private Address Books

This week’s highlighted feature is iabol 2.0’s Private and Public Address Book feature.

The Address Book is accessed in the Tools menu of your user page, and it has some very cool and useful features.

A public address book is one that any user on your iabol 2.0 account can view, and any address entry can be set to read only. The user settings that define who can and cannot edit the address book are set by the Payment Admin or the Multi-Location Admin. A private address book is viewable only by one user.

Public address books are particularly useful because any shipper on the account can look up info directly from the public addresses for quick and accurate shipping. Users can also easily import their address books from Outlook.

If you’re not an iabol 2.0 customer, but you’d like to learn more, try our 30-day free trial.

Shipper Identity Theft

By Marty Stamps

The Internet has revolutionized how people in business get things done. Tasks that used to take hours are now only a click away. Gone are the days of establishing relationships through face-to-face meetings and telephone conversations. they have been replaced with a registration page on a company website. As a result, this anonymity has created the opportunity for impersonation and deceit. Armed with basic information about a person or business, users can become whomever they choose.

For example, take registering to use a carrier website such as FedEx or UPS. The information required to perform this simple task is available in any business directory listing. Company name, address and phone number are all this is required to register as a user on one of these carrier websites. Users can track, ship and even open an account  for billing purposes. Until recently, carriers were allowing users to open accounts and add existing accounts to user profiles with limited verification. However, that process was significantly enhanced recently after an increase in unauthorized account usage was reported by a number of existing customers.

Now the process for opening accounts and adding accounts to user profiles requires various degrees of verification (the details of which differ by carrier). Although these steps taken by the carriers have reduced the risk of unauthorized account usage, it has not been eliminated. Businesses, as well as individuals, need to be aware of the fact that identity theft can occur anywhere, even in the shipping world. We call this latest trend “Shipper Identity Theft.”

In order to prevent the potential compromise of your carrier account numbers, I recommend the following:

1.     Safeguard existing carrier account numbers- to prevent the unauthorized use of your carrier account numbers, limit their exposure to only those employees involved in the shipping process. Minimize the sharing of carrier account numbers with contract employees and/or third parties.

2.     Monitor carrier bills for unauthorized use- reviewing your carrier bills in detail should be standard operating procedure for any business. Do not assume that this information is correct. Pay special attention to those sections of the bill detailing manual shipping methods (e.g. Air Bills, Shipping Documents, etc).

3.     Be mindful of welcome letters, emails or phone calls from carriers- carriers will generally make contact with new accounts opened as a customer service feature. Make sure the process for opening new carrier accounts within your business is controlled.

Use of an automated shipping solution with user administration capabilities can greatly reduce the risk of unauthorized account usage. With low start-up cost and easy set-up, your business could benefit significantly from an automated shipping solution, and avoid the nightmare that is shipper identity theft.

Marty Stamps is Director of Marketing at ABOL Software. Visit www.iabol.com for additional information.