Can you help? “I need an automated hook up between DPD and Sage for parcel labels.”

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We get lots of email enquiries every day here at Tamebay. Many of them we can answer and some we can’t. Here’s one I can’t answer. So I’m throwing it out to the experts – you, the Tamebay readers.

Have you got a solution?

Our correspondent asks: “We send out more than 200 parcels every day, using Sage 50 for orders and accounts and DPD as our courier.

Can you tell me if you know of software that integrates the process of entering the address into Sage to print a DPD label? Currently we have to manually enter this onto the DPD software to print a label.”

Obviously, manually entering addresses must prove to be a massive chunk of time in the working day and we’re all in favour of clever automation ideas. Have you got any tips for this seller?

11 Responses

  1. Hi

    It would be useful to know where the 200 orders are coming from e.g. telesales?, a market place? magento? etc

    I completely understand that every business is different and there are reasons for doing things a certain way, sometimes it is the best way for that business and it works really well and other times the business is behind the times and doing things in an old fashioned way which is very inefficient.

    Personally i hate sage but i know many businesses use it and it works well if you are trained in the software, my view is that it is an accountancy package, not a tool to run a warehouse or ecommerce business, but again i know it can be done but feel it is not the most efficient or best way to do it at all.

    I have to admit that i originally started my business with sage as sage seemed to be the tool for accounting when i started but i quickly realised it was not the solution for a web based business but accounting is needed.

    Most tools and software just connect with sage for accounting, the tool or software takes the order information in its own interface and downloads it from channels and as part of this it sends the data to sage so that the accounting side is also looked after.

    The tool or software is more of a warehouse tool e.g. linnworks, channel advisor, esellerpro etc, they handle all the courier things like DPD and send the sales data to sage to keep the accounts up to date.

    In summary, it is difficult to give an accurate answer without all the reasons behind using sage but in my personal opinion it sounds like the business is trying to run a warehouse / ecommerce business from sage rather than using a warehouse tool to do that and use sage just for the accounts.

    I personally feel the business is running in a old fashioned back to front way but it might work for them and i do not know all the facts so my opinion is based on limited info and might be completely wrong.

    I think a solution might be to use something like linnworks to run the business and connect it to sage to run the accounts.

    I am happy to discuss with this company to help them out, i have no interests in any software, i have nothing to sell them, i am just a fellow online business who has gone through and reviewed many software solutions in my businesses life.

    I can be contacted via email: [email protected] if this company wants to send me some more details so that i can offer a comprehensive suggestion.

    Kind regards

    Kieran

  2. Can SAGE export a .csv file? If so, your DPD account manager will work with you to organise this as an import (IT will sort out the titles etc) and hey presto!

  3. I agree with Kieran, you’ll probably find it easier to come at this the other way – a solution which pulls orders from your website/eBay/Amazon, transfers the details to Sage and prints the label for DPD.

    Tradebox is the Sage specialist so worth talking to about getting the orders into Sage. For DPD support you could look into eSellerPro, XSellco, ChannelGrabber, Linnworks or a handful of other less well known players (according to my current information on DPD support).

    One solution that connects your orders with both Sage and DPD would be ideal of course but I don’t know of one that does both.

    HTH!

    Andy

  4. I resell Sage 50 US version. We sell on our website and on Amazon. We use Cartspan to import our orders. http://www.cartspan.com It will pull in our orders, create a maintenance record, invoice and receipt the payment for our online orders. It is inexpensive and it is a real time saver.

    As for shipping, we print the Sage 50 invoice, fold it and place it in a plastic shipping cover. We ship via US mail. If you work with UPS or Fed EX, there are other solutions. Or if you now need a warehouse application, we work with those companies too. If you want some help finding the right solution, please call us. 304-233-2612. Shirley Byard, Owner – Best Business Strategies http://www.50Accounting.com

  5. Interesting question but I think the question that many small/medium sized businesses on eBay face is how to specifically link PAYPAL POSTAGE WITH A LABELING SYSTEM so you dont have to spend hours each week taping lables to packages.

    The answer is using self-adhesive labels that intregrate with PayPal postage. The problem is no one offers a solution.

    Incredibly PayPal can’t answer this, nor can Avery or HP, and so far no one else I have spoken with can either. Clearly none of the above have considered the issue (I raised it nearly 3 years ago and last month called around to see if there was a solution – there was not). Sounds simple but no-one has yet offered a solution and PayPal don’t seem to be interested either.

    Seems incredible but something that is surely quite simple is still not available.

  6. We use Sage 50 and Tradebox to import all our online orders.

    Sage reports and/or labels is, in my opinion, very underrated and can be used to create the csv/excel file needed to then upload to DPD or shipping labels to attach to parcels.

    If you have sage support, you can send them the information required in a report/label and they will create it for you for free.

    I have created the shipping labels for the orders we send via Royal Mail that have our logo, customer address, return address and order number on, but they can be set up with barcodes (Sage 50 2012 version onwards) as well for tracking.

    Lee

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