Every business looks to cut costs while growing profits. Reducing overhead expenses can include managing inventory more efficiently or switching to a remote workspace. However, automation is one great way to reduce business expenses. If you’re an eCommerce business owner, you know that one of your biggest expenses is shipping. Saving money is one big reason to automate your shipping, but it isn’t the only benefit. 

Reasons Why You Should Automate Your Shipping

• Reduce Cost
• Increase Shipping Speed 
• Increase Shipping Accuracy
• Optimize Supply Chain
• More Growth Opportunities

First, this article will go over how automated shipping can save you money. Then, we will cover the ways automation can improve shipping speed and accuracy. Next, we will explain how shipping automation can help your supply chain. Finally, we will discuss the growth opportunities that come from shipping automation.

Reduce Costs

It might seem counter-intuitive that outsourcing shipping would save your business money. But DIY-ing your shipping actually has more costs than just shipping and postage. 

Automating your shipping with software like ActionShip by Teapplix can save you money by getting you the lowest shipping rate. Teapplix ActionShip includes a Rate Shop option. With SmartMethod^TM, you can rate shop for a particular order and origination address and easily find the cheapest carrier. With Rate Shop, you can choose as many carriers and shipping options as you would like to compare. This lets you easily and quickly find the best shipping rate.

Shipping automation software often includes shipping insurance at a heavily discounted rate. Shipping insurance is critical for eCommerce businesses. Package theft is a serious concern for business owners and online shoppers. In a 6-month period, more than half of online shoppers did not receive at least one package they ordered. Shipping insurance protects you from package theft, damaged packages, or lost packages. Teapplix ActionShip provides shipping insurance to all users at a substantial discount over the rate charged by shipping carriers.

Shipping automation can save you money on shipping rates, shipping insurance, labels, and packaging. Teapplix ActionShip can find you the cheapest shipping rates with its Rate Shop option and can offer you big savings on shipping insurance.

Automated shipping software also saves you time. Instead of packing items or waiting in line at the post office, you can spend your time growing your customer base or developing new products. Time is money for entrepreneurs. Saving time on shipping allows you to invest that time back into your business and can make your business more profitable.

Increase Shipping Speed 

Teapplix ActionShip can save you time by letting you batch ship orders. Batch shipping lets you organize multiple shipments into your own customized groups. Rather than spend time printing each individual order, batch shipping lets you print up to 2000 labels in one batch. Set up group orders based on the shipping carrier and label size. Teapplix ActionShip even lets you batch rate shop. Easily find the cheapest shipping rate for multiple shipments.

Teapplix ActionShip remembers weight dimensions and shipping methods based on the item name. If you have a popular item, you can easily ship multiple orders of that item without having to reenter the product’s dimensions each time. The sooner you ship out a product, the sooner your customer receives that product and the happier your customers will be. 

Increase Shipping Accuracy

Automated shipping reduces human errors that can be costly for your business. Look for shipping automation with address validation. Teapplix ActionShip has the ability to verify the address of multiple addresses. Don’t risk customer satisfaction with shipping mistakes. 

Teapplix ActionShip also offers scan-based shipping. Scan-based shipping allows you to scan your products and it will generate the shipping label for that order. As you scan each product label, you will be notified of the quantity needed for each order. This allows you to easily and accurately pack each order.

Automating the logistics of shipping can significantly improve shipping accuracy and customer satisfaction. Teapplix ActionShip can help you avoid costly shipping mistakes.

Optimize Supply Chain

Automations are one of the best ways to overcome supply chain issues. Optimizing and automating your business is the best way to maintain a competitive edge. Automation can make your business more resilient to recessions, pandemics, and other unpredictable events. 

Teapplix ActionShip allows you to track inventory including stale products and products in storage. Track inventory across multiple warehouses easily with flexible fulfillment options. Teapplix ActionShip offers comprehensive reports and sales forecasts. This allows you to make informed decisions on current and future industry trends.

When automating your shipping, look for software with important integrations in inventory and order management, tracking and reporting. ActionShip by Teapplix has many integrations that allow you to optimize accounting, inventory, and warehouse management. ActionShip’s integration with QuickBooks helps manage all your financial and inventory tracking.

More Growth Opportunities

When selecting automation software for shipping, make sure they offer carriers and shipping services that your business needs. Shipping automation frees you up to grow your business in new ways. Teapplix ActionShip integrates with over 50 marketplaces. This allows you to easily expand your business to new marketplaces. Manage orders, inventory, and print marketplace-specific labels for platforms like Wayfair, Amazon, Shopify, BigCommerce, and more. Grow your business with Teapplix ActionShip and sell on more marketplaces.

Be sure that the automation software you select can grow with your company. Shipping automation allows you to ship from more locations and even expand to ship globally. Teapplix Actionship offers multiple US domestic and international carriers. With integrations for FedEx, UPS, DHL, and more you can easily expand your shipping options to reach even more customers.

Shipping automation frees up your time to focus on growing your business. Automation allows you to focus on your company core and what sets your company apart. With automation software making sure your orders ship accurately and on time, you can focus on staying competitive in the business world.

Summary

Shipping automation saves you time and money. Ship faster and more accurately with shipping automation software like Teapplix ActionShip. Easily find the best rates for shipping orders. Automation frees up your time so you can focus on growing your business and selling on more marketplaces.

Teapplix ActionShip users enjoy a full featured shipping and inventory platform with over 50 marketplace integrations. This allows retailers and shippers the ability to tie into multiple channels and ship their merchandise from a single, consolidated solution.

Even though most users know about the time savings that ActionShip provides, many are missing out on the integrated shipping insurance product offered within ActionShip. Partnering with Shipsurance, ActionShip provides discounted shipping insurance options to all of their U.S. based customers. This often overlooked piece of the shipping process can save shippers thousands of dollars in shipping fees and provide a simple claims process if something is damaged or lost in transit.

The shipping carriers offer declared value protection for your shipments that are often costly and the coverage is contingent on proving they are at fault if something happens. Third party insurers, such as Shipsurance, provide full, all-risk coverage for your packages in transit, often at a fraction of what the carriers charge. Not only is it more cost effective, shipping claims are typically paid within a week!

Some of the benefits of using ActionShip’s built in insurance offering are:

Lower Rates – Save over 50% off of the carrier declared value costs. Cover shipments sent via DHL eCommerce, DHL Express , FedEx, FedEx FIMS, FedEx SmartPost, OnTrac, UPS, UPS Mail Innovations, and the USPS.
Broader Coverage – Coverage is all-risk with easy to read and understand coverage rules.
Real Insurance – The carriers declared value coverage require you to prove carrier negligence. ActionShip’s insurance solution through Shipsurance do not require proof of negligence.
Claims – Handling and managing claims through the shipping carriers can be an eye opening experience. When insuring through ActionShip, the paperless claims process can be streamlined with the entire lifecycle usually lasting less than one week. You will deal with a personal agent that will be courteous and helpful thought out the process.
Automation – Using ActionShip’s automation rules, shippers can set the system up to automatically cover outbound packages based on specific rules, making training new users a piece of cake.

Retail ecommerce sales are expected to hit $4.1 trillion by 2020. Selling online is a channel all retailers must follow and using ActionShip as a shipping platform will take care of the shipping side of the business. Along with the built in shipping insurance coverage, retailers can make sure their shipments are covered while in transit and that they will be made whole again if something happens to the packages while they are in transit.

Walmart is opening up their Free 2-Day Shipping Program to all eligible Walmart Marketplace sellers whose:
• On-time shipping and delivery performance is better than 95% (last 30 days performance report)
• Order shipping has 95% or above valid tracking rate
• Order cancellation rate is less than 1.5%
• Offers favorable return policy
• Has sold on Walmart Marketplace for at least 90 days and fulfilled at least 100 orders
If you meet these criteria, you may request access to the program by going to Seller Center  General Settings  Shipping

The Free 2-Day Shipping program allows seller fulfill or 3rd party fulfill. However, Teapplix feels the current 3rd party fulfill options are all more expensive than FBA and not as good a deal, and require you to spread your inventory now to multiple Walmart oriented warehouse in addition to your current FBA warehouses. So we strongly recommend seller self fulfill to get started:

You gain the same key benefits even with seller self fulfill:
• offer free 2-Day Shipping to buyers in specific regions or nationwide
• increase search rankings and product visibility
• get better chance to win the Buy Box and conversion

Once you are accepted in the program, you can configure your item settings for:
• some or all your Walmart SKUs
• selected regions/States or all 48-state regions

However, these settings are required for all participating items in the Free 2-Day Shipping Program:
• lag time = “0” with 2:00pm cutoff time
• default $0 shipping fee
Please refer to Walmart Seller Help article for further details - Configure Settings and Items for 2-Day Shipping

Sellers are responsible for monitoring their performance regularly to stay in the program. Walmart provides report specific for Free 2-Day Shipping program performance. Failing to keep up performance requirement will result in warning, suspension or termination of participation in the program.

Teapplix users can setup filter to automatically submit the orders to a designated Queue, and use automatic rate shop to select shipping method that meet the delivery requirement with lowest rate.

Walmart is heavily pushing the 2-Day shipping program. However, the initial customer case shows that most of the early adoption is name brands. We are very interested in hearing about how the 2-Day shipping program will affect private label sellers.