Anyone know of an automated way to calculate UPS shipping cost, or the best way to estimate it. I picked up our first drop shipper and we need a way to bill the customer for the shipping before the item is shipped so I was hoping some of you would have experience in this. Thanks!
Im looking for an automated way of going around it, not a desktop or website punch in with employees. :|
Have you perhaps thought about using theri website and think about the furthest place you can think of from your dropshipper in the 48 states then calculating the shipping expense? Perhaps do it for about 10 cities across the country as well. Use the research to set a standard shipping price on your product(s). You might end up biting some of the expense, whereas other times you'll end up making money on the shipping price too.
After much digging around Google and found not only the answer but some scripts to do it here: http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=429083 Bebicul; The customer will enter in the info at the time of checkout, or in my case I use their IP to estimate shipping with UPS ground using IP to zipcode, then on checkout get the data and update the cart, charge the CC, send in the order and let the factory ship the product(s). No employees/humans at any point and time should have to visit UPS and enter in the customer data, to much room for error, and its way cheaper to let a computer handle all data for the shipping. The only thing anyone has to do is put the junk in a box, the computer will do the rest, including print out a label for the guy packing the box.