Home › Forums › Shipping: The Final Frontier › Shipping Manifest
- This topic has 11 replies, 5 voices, and was last updated 1 year, 10 months ago by JasonK.
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12/05/2022 at 2:12 pm #98549
Does anybody provide a shipping manifest to the post office when you drop off your packages? On Mondays we are dropping off 40-50 packages at the post office in the business park where our office is at. We are not the only online sellers in the park so this post office gets LOTS of packages on Mondays. They are starting to get pretty nasty to us when we drop off our packages saying we have to give them a manifest but I don’t even know how to go about doing that. We did a trial run with Pirate Ship but I didn’t like the reduced information about the sale that gets pulled across so we went back to using the eBay shipping wizard. I guess we could give Pirate Ship another go if that is an easier way to get a shipping manifest.
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12/05/2022 at 2:20 pm #98550
Our carrier picks up from our home, so she scans them on pick up. Its part of her job so its all good.
The rare time we take packages to the Post Office, we always stand in line and have the PO worker scan the packages in front of us. Only way to be sure it’ll get done.
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12/05/2022 at 3:17 pm #98556
Yeah, I’m pretty sure they would get mad at us if we handed them an entire car-load of packages at the retail counter. This post office is not very friendly. I’ve thought about having the mail carrier just come pickup from us, not sure if there is a way to tell them to come every day without filling out the “schedule a pickup” form on the website every time. When I was working out of my house the local post office refused to show up unless I filled out that form every time, even though I had packages for them just about every day.
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12/05/2022 at 3:03 pm #98555
Here’s the instructions on how to print a SCAN sheet for the post office using eBay’s shipping program:
https://community.ebay.com/t5/Commonly-Asked-Questions/How-do-I-print-a-USPS-scan-form/ta-p/30352902
We use stamps.com since we sell on many platforms. We print out the SCAN sheet for our mail carrier. It saves them time from having to scan each package individually.
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12/05/2022 at 3:24 pm #98557
Clarity,
Are you able to create that scan sheet even if you don’t use the bulk shipping wizard? I’m going play around with this a bit tomorrow but I thought you had to print all your labels at once in the bulk shipping wizard and that’s a no-go at the moment. We still pick, pack and weigh our packages one at a time. I’m starting to think I’m going to have to invest a bunch of mornings into rebuilding our shipping process.
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12/06/2022 at 10:53 am #98571
@Clarity – I’m interested in your use of Stamps.com. I sell on eBay and Etsy and use PirateShip for my international packages. I could use PirateShip for everything, but their interface isn’t designed well for processing multiple packages at once, so I end up shipping through eBay, Etsy and often PirateShip all in the same day. Does Stamps.com have a decent interface for shipping multiple packages at once? How do their prices compare? Thanks
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12/06/2022 at 11:32 am #98575
I could use PirateShip for everything, but their interface isn’t designed well for processing multiple packages at once,
So… Many… Mouse Clicks… To get to… a printed label!
On ebay I purchase the label and hit enter after the pop-up shows up. Easy peasy and then right back to the shipment page for the next item. If pirateship would have a streamlined and simplified ebay shipment interface as well as import the shipping measurement details I have on ebay I’d use them more. As it is now I have to bring up my ebay shipment page in another tab to know what measurements and shipment type I had in there originally.
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12/06/2022 at 11:31 am #98574
Week Ending 12/3/22
Gross Sales(w/o shipping $ tax): $715.65
Net Sales: $579.87
Total Items Sold 21
Total Items in eBay Store: 1091 / Total Items in Etsy Store: 337
Items Sold eBay: 17 / Items Sold Etsy: 4
Cost of Items Sold: $60.00
COGS Percent 10.35%
Highest Price Sold: $100.00 (Vintage Leica Camera Case)
Average Price Sold: $34.08
Returns: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory: $0.00
Average Days Listed: 185
Longest Listed: 1645
New items listed: 12Sold well above my average number of items last week, but my average sale price was well below usual, so ended up with a good but not impressive showing. Taking a lot of offers and getting a lot of low ball offers that don’t go anywhere. Had a painful sale cancellation on Etsy for a $350 pair of antique handcuffs. According to Etsy it was some type of scam account and they stepped in to cancel it.
This was my best week of the year last year, so a bit disappointing to see only about a 3rd the dollar amount this year. This week has started out strong though, and it looks clear for getting a decent amount listed this week.
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12/13/2022 at 12:28 pm #98669
So the solution for now seems to be to ship using Pirate Ship on Mondays when we have 30+ packages. I brought them all the boxes and a manifest yesterday and the next PITA is that they refuse to answer the buzzer at the side door to give me a cart and want me to wait in the huge retail line every time just to ask for a cart to put my boxes and manifest in. I swear it’s almost like my Post Office is trying to make me switch to UPS.
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12/13/2022 at 5:14 pm #98672
If you are shipping that quantity of packages, I’d start scheduling at least one pickup Sunday night for Monday so that you can hand the packages to the carrier when they arrive. Of course, that only works if you can have all your packages ready by the time they arrive. You’ve probably thought of this already.
One other idea, I have 3 post offices in about a 15-minute radius of my house. I have found them to each be different with how they handle large numbers of packages. One of them treats me like a pariah when I walk in while another is pleasant and helpful. You might shop around if it isn’t too much of a drive. Sounds like you’re doing a lot of waiting in line. Perhaps a longer drive will find a more accommodating branch.
You can pay a fee to UPS to have them make a daily stop. Their rates have come down quite a bit and I see them competitive much more often. Of course, their prices still can’t beat USPS on first class packages.
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12/16/2022 at 11:22 am #98692
When I worked out of my house I would pack at night after I got home from work and then schedule a pickup for the next day. The dilemma is you have to know how many first class and priority mail items you need picked up, it has to be exact. My mail carrier would actually leave packages if the count didn’t match the pickup request. That pretty much makes it impossible to schedule a pickup for my business because a good portion of items sell overnight and I don’t want to make those items wait another whole day just because they were not accounted for when I scheduled the pickup, not to mention the pain of going into the website and scheduling a pickup every single night. There has to be an easier way to do this, I can’t imagine bigger companies do it this way so how do they provide their packages to the post office? I feel like we are trapped in this middle-size purgatory, too big to do things like a retail customer but too small to be taken seriously as a big customer.
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12/16/2022 at 11:26 am #98693
Oh and regarding trying a different post office, that is possible but the post office is literally in the same business park as my office. It’s actually part of why I leased the office I have. Driving 10-15 min in traffic to get to a different post office when you have one across the street seems like such a waste.
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