Customer Report Enhanced

We have enhanced our customer report. The report now has additional information:

  • amazon or ebay fees
  • ship date
  • actual shipping cost (current captured for usps only)
  • item information

In addition, there was a bug where the date filtering isn't working. This has been fixed

Posted in Site Updates | 153 Comments

Important upcoming change to Teapplix remember weigth system

We are planning a major enhancement to Teapplix remember weight system. This change is targeted to be released on January 25th after business hours. The change will affect how you save shipping methods.

Currently, for each item name, you can remember one domestic shipping method and one international shipping method:
Old Remember Weight

This old design do not handle the case for shopping carts where the customer can select different shipping methods. When the customer select a faster shipping method, often at an extra cost, this design do not take it into consideration.

To get around the case, Teapplix has some work-around in our current design. For example, Amazon orders has "-Standard", "-Expedited" appended to item names such that you can use a different remember weight entry for these.

However, as eBay now is moving to the same "shipping class" concept, and as Teapplix supports more shopping carts and marketplaces, appending shipping methods to item names no longer scale.

In our new design, we will allow 5 different shipping classes:

  1. Standard
  2. Expedited
  3. Second-day (domestic only)
  4. One-day (domestic only)
  5. Economy

Orders from eBay / Amazon and other shopping carts will be mapped to one of these shipping classes. We will gradually modify our shopping cart support to map to these shipping classes.

The remember weight screen will be modified to have multiple entries, one per shipping class:
New Remember Weight Screen

Continue reading

Posted in Site Updates | 162 Comments

How to link your Magento shopping cart to Teapplix

http://www.teapplix.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=76

Posted in Howto, Site Updates | Tagged , | 45 Comments

How to link your Volusion shopping cart to Teapplix

To integrate with Volusion shopping cart, Teapplix requires Volusion API access. Currently the API access is only available with a Gold or above level Volusion plan.

To integrate with Volusion, follow these steps:

  1. Login to Volusion admin area, and go to Inventory => Import Export:
    Inventory => Import / Export
  2. Select Volusion API:
    Generic
  3. Select "Generic\Orders":
    Generic Orders
  4. Check the first check box => all columns * (make sure nothing else is checked):
    Check *
  5. Scroll down to o.OrderStatus, and fill in the box WHERE_Value with the Order Status you want to export. (make sure you don't check the checkbox)
    Order Status Selection
  6. Click Run on top and copy & paste the URL into Teapplix shopping cart configuration. You can download the order report to import to Teapplix if you want to see your order immediately.
    URL and Order Download
Posted in Howto | Tagged , | 170 Comments

Teapplix releases support for Volusion shopping cart

Teapplix support for Volusion shopping cart is released. We use Volusion API to do automatic, bi-directional order import and shipping status update.

Posted in Site Updates | Tagged | 156 Comments

Google Analytics, Twitter Facebook and your Browsing History

As Teapplix starts to build out our Facebook fan page, and twitter account, I am increasing worried that your browsing history now is tracked across multiple sites.

Since many websites uses "widgets" from Facebook, Twitter, or tracking code from Google (Analytics, AdSense, etc), through cookies Google / Facebook / Twitter and whoever that deploy these type of thirdparty "thingy" across many websites will be able to see your browsing history as you visit any website that deploy their code.

For example, if you visit www.badsite.com, and badsite has a Facebook social plugin put on their page, then Facebook will know that you visited www.badsite.com. Facebook will know all the sites that you visited that has some kind of Facebooks "plugin" code deployed. With all those "like" or "share" buttons, most sites will have such a thing.

To prevent this from happening, you have some choices:

1) If you use Firefox, you can block cookies from specific domains. The downside is that now you can no longer login to them. For example, I block all cookies from google, facebook, twitter, addthis, sharethis etc from my Firefox browser. The problem is of course, I can't login to any of these sites. But they won't know my browsing history.

2) If you use IE8, you can turn on "InPrivate Browsing". This is a very neat feature, it blocks automatically code to send cookies to thirdparty tracking sites like Google, Facebook, Twitter, etc. InPrivate browsing is smart enough to count any website that receiving thirdparty tracking info. If a site did this 10 times (default), then the site will be blacklisted and IE8 won't send anymore cookies to that site.

This is better than firefox because you won't lose the ability to login to Google / Facebook / Twitter etc. And they automatically add new ones to blacklist.

The downside of this plugin is that you have to turn it on everytime you start your browser. However, there are registry changes you can make (Search for InPriviate automatic) that will turn it on by default.

Posted in Site Updates | Tagged , , , , , , | 54 Comments

Zebra ZP450 Thermal Label Printer

Zebra ZP450 If you print a lot of shipping labels, your best bet is a thermal label printer. Most of our customers use Zebra 2844 thermal printer. I had a chance to visit a customer who just acquired a new Zebra ZP450 printer. This printer isn't much bigger than the 2844, just a little taller. Watching it print is a religious experience. Compared to 2844, it is much much faster. We tried a batch from Teapplix integrated with DaZzle. 136 labels in less than 5 minutes. Customer told me the same batch in 2844 will be 40+ minutes.

Well worth it if you are buying a thermal. And the amazing thing is, ZP450 isn't much more expensive (new) than a 2844!

Posted in Howto | Tagged , , | Comments Off on Zebra ZP450 Thermal Label Printer

Teapplix Releases Discount USPS Rates Powered by Express1

We are excited to announce the capability to purchase discount USPS priority and express mail shipping labels through Teapplix powered by Express1.
With our Express1 integration, any Teapplix customer can print discount USPS Priority Mail (flat rate and 1-3lbs) and Express Mail (1-2lbs) shipping labels, at the deepest discount available that you normally will not qualify for. You get to save up to $1 per piece on some priority mail labels.
Most businesses don’t meet the volume requirements for discounts on their USPS Priority, Flat Rate or Express shipping. As a volume postage partner of the USPS, Express 1 is able to make available big business discounts for any Teapplix customer.
Teapplix has integrated this capability directly into the product. Within the product there is a special queue that filter out all orders that qualify for the Express1 discount, and with a single button click you can generate the shipping label via PDF to be sent to your printer.
Setup is easy, there is a shipping section to put in your address and your label preferences. We also preserved the capability to put SKU on your shipping labels. Label cancel and refund is instant in our "Order History" display.
You can signup for an free Express1 account and pay for postage via credit card or ACH transfer.
So look for the red "discount priority & express" link for qualifying orders, and use the Setup section to setup your Express1 account today to leverage the savings.

Posted in Site Updates | Tagged | 8 Comments

Teapplix Releases Standalone QuickBooks Integration Product

Teapplix.com, a leading supplier of web-based shipping automation and accounting integration software,
announced today the release of it's standalone QuickBooks Integration product.

Available immediately, Teapplix QuickBooks Integration allows sellers large and small to better
track their financial data for profit-loss analysis, tax accounting and inventory controls.

Teapplix can automatically pull orders from eBay, PayPal, Amazon, Fulfillment by Amazon, Yahoo Stores, ProStores, as well as many leading shopping cart software. All orders can be exported to QuickBooks automatically without manual file import and export.

Teapplix's simple to use web interface allows sellers to setup flexible mapping rules to control how orders are exported to QuickBooks. You can define inventory name mapping, customer creation rules, etc.

Teapplix QuickBooks Integration product is free for occasional sellers, and starts at $9.99 a month or $99 a year for others. You can signup for a no risk, 30 day free trial at:

http://www.teapplix.com/trial.html

Posted in Site Updates | Tagged , , , , , | 415 Comments