Ship Station Setup

Part of the v7.2.4 updater is integration with Ship Station which is a service that will allow you to easily create shipping labels while saving $$$'s on shipping. More details are available here...
https://www.shipstation.com/

Until we get a dedicated help page on the site, here are the setup instructions to connect your ECT Admin to Ship Station...

In the ECT Admin -> Shipping Admin -> Shipping Methods, click on "Ship Station Admin" under the Administration column and create your Ship Station username and password.

In the ShipStation admin, click on "Onboard" in the menu at the top of the screen on the left.

For "Connect a Selling Channel" click on the button to add a new one.

There will be a lot of icons displayed and you have to find "Custom Store" and click on that.

The "XML web page that ShipStation can communicate with" will be the ajaxservice.asp/php page on your site. So for instance ...
https://www.yourstoreurl.com/vsadmin/ajaxservice.php

The username and password as those that you created for the Ship Station username and password. NOT your ECT admin username and password.

Now for the Custom Store Order Statuses enter the Private Status for the order status types that you wish to match. Our recommendations would be...
Unpaid Status: Unauthorized
Paid Status: New Order
Shipped Status: Shipped
Cancelled Status: Cancelled
On-Hold Status: Cancelled

You can of course choose the status types you like and also, it may be an idea to create a new status, for instance "Paid" for those new orders that you have checked and now want to import to Ship Station.

Click on Test Connection to test the connection and "Connect" to creat the new connection.

You can click on the button at the top right of the screen when you wish to import new orders.

When orders are shipping in Ship Station, the tracking number and order status is updated in the ECT admin with the Shipped Status, and this is assumed to be Status ID 6 which is usually the shipped status. If you wish to change this, use the parameter...
shipstationshippedstatus=6
$shipstationshippedstatus=6;

If the order status is set to send emails (In the Admin Order Status page) then this will happen when an order is shipped via Ship Station. If you prefer Ship Station to send the tracking info then remember to set the status to not send emails.

Vince

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Thanks for integrating ShipStation into ECT. I have been using the shipstation add-on from eCom for years and I love it, though it did have a couple issues (which are now resolved in the ECT integration).

One feature that eCom had was the ability to change the pre-ship Status using the "preShipStatus=X" parameter. While ECT does allow for the post ship status to be changed using "shipstationshippedstatus=X", there is no option for the pre-ship status.

Currently with the ECT implementation, it's importing orders in using order status #3 but I need the orders to import in using status #4.

Could you please add a parameter like what eCom had? Something like "shipstationauthorizedstatus=X" ? If not, can you please point me to the piece of code where I could manually change this over from order status #3 to order status #4.

Thanks.

Hi Sparksm2

quote:

---

Could you please add a parameter like what eCom had? Something like "shipstationauthorizedstatus=X" ?

---

When you create your Custom Store you have to map the order status types to the shipstation order status. Normally you would use say...
Paid Status: New Order
Would the idea be to change that Paid Status to something else?

Vince

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Vince, I would like to change the parameter that is used by ShipStation to import in the orders.

When we take orders in they come in as "Authorized", AKA orderstatus 3. On our end we print all of the Authorized orders and then sort them into one of 2 other statuses. Orders that we're going to ship that day will go into "Packing", which is orderstatus 4 (this is the parameter I want ShipStation to import from). Orders that need to be made & packed later we put into "Production", which is orderstatus 7 for me.

In the current ECT implementation, it's pulling in ALL the orders that are authorized (orderstatus 3) but I do not want to do that. I want to pull in just the order that I'll be shipping that day (orderstatus 4 for me).

Does that make sense?

So in that case you should have

Paid Status: Packing

Is that what you have?

Vince

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Vince, I do now and appears to be functioning how I would like it to. I guess I misunderstood how this version worked; I thought ShipStation needed Status ID for both the outgoing and incoming info. Simple fix, thanks for the clarification.

I am currently using ECT PHP 7.2.3 and have been using Ship Station for a while.

Is there anything different I need to do when I update to ECT 7.2.4?

Patrick

Hi Patrick
Do you mean you have been using ShipStation as a MOD or add-on and want to start using the ECT built-in version? If so then yes, you would need to go through the setup procedure again as I guess the "XML web page that ShipStation can communicate with" will be different. Details are above for how to configure.

Vince

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Today I decided to finally do a batch of orders using the ECT integrated shipstation instead of the eCom addon.

I was able to import in orders fine, but after I printed, the tracking numbers were not sent to the database and the order status was not changed to the shipped status I input.

I am using the shipstationshippedstatus=5 parameter. For me status 5 has a private and public text that reads "Ready to Ship". Also, within my shipstation setup my "Shipped Statuses" is also set to "Ready To Ship".

Is there some sort of mismatch, that I'm missing?

Also, two suggestions:
1) Have the ability to turn off pending orders. I don't need to see them in my "Awaiting Payment" section of ShipStation.
2) Add on the product image to the imported items.

Hi there
Do you get any connection errors when you look in your ShipStation admin area? At the top right have you tried clicking the arrow in a circle icon to synchronize?

Vince

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Nope, no errors. After creating the label, it even says "Transmit Tracking Data Succeeded".

For now, I've simply re-enabled the eCom version, but I would like to get the ECT version up and going.

When you click "shipments", you will see a column under "Notifications"
The first icon is "notification to marketplace"
Are all of them green for the orders in question?

David

Yes, all green.

Was the tracking number inserted into the admin from ship station and the status was just not changed?
Or neither happened?

David

No tracking uploaded.
No status change.

Nothing happened.

I can try it again the next time I have a small batch to send out. I did that initial trial on a big batch of a lot of orders, it was terrible to copy and paste all those tracking numbers back in again. I do not miss those days!

Could you send the site FTP login to my email (vince AT ecommercetemplates DOT com) as I want to take a look at the site error logs. It may be for some reason there is an error when trying to update the cart.

Vince

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Am I right that this ShipStation integration through the "ECT Admin -> Shipping Methods -> Ship Station Admin" has no impact on the real-time rates that customers see for UPS, USPS, FedEx, etc.?

In other words, are the rates still determined solely by the account information you configure for those carriers in the Shipping Admin ?

Thank in advance for clarifying this.

That's right Paul.
Your rates shown to customers are solely managed within the ect store and settings.

David

I've been using the shipstation add on. I had some issues and wanted to use try the ecomm version. So Tonight I added a new store connection to shipstation and went into the ecomm admin area and added user name and password.

I tested the connection in shipstation and it shows connected. But orders are not being imported. I'm not sure where I could have gone wrong. It seems pretty straightforward.

Hi Steven
Two things spring to mind. Firstly it could be the date range as Shipstation will only import the last 24 hours of orders by default. But also it could be that the order status you have for importing orders is not the one you have set in the ECT admin orders page.

Vince

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Thanks Vince. i copied the shipping status in shipstation custom store exactly as the mod was done.

To test it, I make a new order. Go to shipstation and refresh, the add on will see the new order, the new custom store doesn't import.

Couple of questions, should I be pointing shipstation to the vsadmin or the hidden vsadmin folder?

Also I opened the ajaxservice.php file and dont see either of these lines, $preShipStatus=3;
$postShipStatus=6; Im suspecting this is the problem. I just dont know where to put those lines.