Royal Mail 'tracked', Batch Import, Direct Feed

[lessharma]

Hi all,

Hope you are all well.

We have installed Royal mail's 'Dispatch Express' software onto our PC for printing Royal mail postage labels and automatic billing to Royal mail.

The main reason is that Royal mail is pushing a sort of new service called ' Royal mail Tracked'. The 'Tracked' service is 2/3 days to delivery anywhere in the UK, on my account the price is £3.48 for up to 5KG and 10KG in coming soon.
You can track the item up to delivery and the price great value.

To print a ‘Tracked’ postage label you must use Royal mail’s software ‘Despatch Express’. The software prints the labels and does the billing with Royal mail at the day of the day.

After using ‘Despatch Express’ for a few weeks now it takes too long to enter the name, address and shipping class manually. So I’m looking into importing the orders via the batch import in Despatch Express.
Mole-End / Jan are releasing a BETA version of ‘One Stop Order Processing for Actinic V9’ next week that will have a export file support for Despatch Express’ which is great I look forward to trying it out.

Despatch Express also has a feature named ‘Direct Feed’ which allows another program like Actinic to create simple text files containing name, address and shipping class / weight. Despatch Express would than print the correct postage labels automatically. This text file is stored in a folder and Despatch Express would than read this file and print labels.

Can only help with making Actinic work with Despatch Express (Direct Feed), write plugin, write software... for money of course!

With Royal mail pushing ‘Tracked’ as a new service and great prices I can see Royal mail ‘Tracked’ becoming very popular.

See links below to my Dropbox public folder for a Power Point file that shows all the import features of Despatch Express and ‘Direct Feed’. Also along with a Excel file that shows more info.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1589571/inte...0ver%201.0.ppt

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1589571/Batc...0Generator.xls

[Jan]

The batch import despatch express is the format that we are adding to One Stop Order Processing for Actinic for you tomorrow Les, it's already available in OSOP multi channel so we are just porting it over. the beta should be available next week.

[lessharma]

The direct feed despatch express is the format that we are adding to One Stop Order Processing for Actinic for you tomorrow Les, it's already available in OSOP multi channel so we are just porting it over.

Hi Jan,

Could you let me know when the new version of 'One Stop Order Processing for Actinic V9' is out or send me a link for download as I would like to try out straight away.

I may be wrong on this but OSOP multi channel exports a text file that can be imported into Despatch Express, that's called 'Batch import' in Despatch Express.

Dirert Feed is not the same as Batch Import, unless your new version of OSOP is set-up for Dirert Feed.

The Power Point link shows how Dirert Feed works. As I said I may be wrong and maybe OSOP will work with Dirert Feed.

Dirert Feed also generates a Royal mail 'Track number' after the label is printed, can this number be picked up by OSOP?

[Jan]

It will only be a one way process with OSOP, the tracking number will not be picked up.

I'll let you know when a beta version is available.

Regards,

[Jan]

Hi Les,

I confirmed with Pat now that the format that we will be supporting is the batch import only. I've updated my previous post to avoid confusion.

Regards,

[lessharma]

Hi Les,

I confirmed with Pat now that the format that we will be supporting is the batch import only. I've updated my previous post to avoid confusion.

Regards,

Hi Jan,

Great, look forward to trying it out.

Will 'Direct Feed' be something Mole End may look into for a future release?

[saucysal]

Hdnl?

Hi Jan. Any plans to do the same for Home Delivery Network? Would be great to be able to export from Actinic into their online system, selectively.

We were using Royal Mail Tracked but have changed to HDNL, just sending a few Tracked. This is because the tracking of the Tracked just says "Delivered", and the date and name of depot delivering. This is not sufficient. Delivered to addressee or neighbour? Left in shed? When?

PayPal have been accepting Delivered as meaning the customer has received the goods, but at the moment for credit and debit cards (SagePay and HSBC) they are not accepting it as proof of delivery, which makes the point of the system pointless.

HDNL also quoted a lower price than Tracked, and give more detailed tracking with full history showing on-screen.

Sarah

[Jan]

Les :

It doesn't really fit into One Stop Order Processing but if enough people were interested we could look at writing a custom plugin.

Sarah,

If Home Delivery Network can import a CSV file of addresses then you can link to it with our One Stop Order Processing product. Send details though to the Mole End support desk and I can take a look if you like.

Regards,

[lessharma]

Hi Jan,

Do you know what day this week the new BETA of OSOP will be out, I'm going on Holiday (somewhere hot) next week and would like to have it up and running before I go.

[Jan]

Pat says he sent it to you yesterday evening, could you contact support at mole end if you haven't received it.

Regards,

[lessharma]

Morning Jan,

Thanks, received email from Pat yesterday and spent most of last night working on it.

A few questions.

1. Despatch Express needs the product weight entered in whole grams with no decimal point, Actinic product weight has a decimal point - can I remove this? Set a rule?

2. In Actinic I name a shipping service '1st class post' but in Despatch Express the code is STL01, can I set rules to change the Actinic shipping names to Despatch Express codes?

3. Despatch Express needs other info like 'Service Enhancements' and 'Format' to make the batch import work. Can I set-up extra fields in Actinic to show OSOP this extra data?

[saucysal]

CSV Export to HDNL when Exporting to Sage

Hi Jan. I have looked into exporting from Actinic into Home Delivery Network - this can been done with a csv file, and HDNL have supplied field names, etc. However, we are exporting orders from Actinic into Sage, and processing them on Sage. Changing the export settings in Actinic for HDNL messes up the settings for Sage, and they would have to be changed back and forth every 5 minutes of the day and night, which isn't on.

Do you know of any way of having two sets of export files on Actinic running concurrently? I somehow doubt that this is possible.

I have my doubts as to how well exporting address data into any carrier system will really work successfully in practice, as so many customers make errors in their addresses, including wrong postcodes (for example typing their home postcode in their delivery address to workplace), and have safeplace instructions that need editing, etc.

Sarah

[lessharma]

Hi,

Has anyone else got Mole-End's OSOP working with Despatch Express (Batch Import) yet?

[chickenhouseman]

Hi Jan. I have looked into exporting from Actinic into Home Delivery Network - this can been done with a csv file, and HDNL have supplied field names, etc. However, we are exporting orders from Actinic into Sage, and processing them on Sage. Changing the export settings in Actinic for HDNL messes up the settings for Sage, and they would have to be changed back and forth every 5 minutes of the day and night, which isn't on.

Do you know of any way of having two sets of export files on Actinic running concurrently? I somehow doubt that this is possible.

I have my doubts as to how well exporting address data into any carrier system will really work successfully in practice, as so many customers make errors in their addresses, including wrong postcodes (for example typing their home postcode in their delivery address to workplace), and have safeplace instructions that need editing, etc.

Sarah

We send all our orders to sage then export 2 sales order reports, one for parcelforce and one for royal mail. Parcelforce is fixed rate and royalmail is all sent 1st class recorded parcel so we only need a total weight at the end of the day. It's was bit of a pain to set up initially as there is very little documentation but seems to work ok now. we process 1500/ orders a month this way. Exporting / importing orders takes a couple of minutes.

[jayzy1]

We send all our orders to sage then export 2 sales order reports, one for parcelforce and one for royal mail.

Hi, We also use parcelforce and looking at using royal mail as well. Can you advise me how to go about exporting/importing orders for use with these methods? any help would be much appreciated. Thanks