We use UPS and Fed-Ex a ton. We use V-Technologies Star-Ship for processing them. I have set-up the generic Btreive interface for DBA. It works great but to set it up to write the freight and tracking # back to the sales order it requires a real time ADE protocol set-up. See the link  
 
[/url] http://vtechnologies.com/Docs/ADE_Spec.pdf[/url]  
 
Maybe if their is enough interest with other DBAERS we could find a cool way to implement this?
 
John

Would you...or someone...be kind enough to give detail of how to do this?

UPS is offering a free "Webinar" on integration of UOWS. Go to http://upspreferred.webex.com to sign up (I think you have to be a "UPS Preferred Customer").

We have both UPS and Fed-Ex ODBC mapped and works great. We use Address line 1 for the attention or M/F field. Address 2 and 3 for the actual address. No problems what so ever. Fortunatly when we started with DBA this is the way we imported all of the addresses. 8)
 
John

Previously, I attend the Webinar offerred by UPS.  Now I am ready to start on this project and I have contacted my UPS Rep.
 
Is this a LIVE link or will it be export/import??

Thanks... i just wanted to make sure that it was LIVE info.... otherwise there would be no point for our business to change procedures.

Tim,
 
Are you able to import data from all address lines on the sales order?  I can only get the first address line (and I would love to get them all, it would save some mistakes  )

Tim,
 
did you have to do any "prep-work" to dba before you started the automation??  Such as, address format (like w/ the USPS people).  What happens if UPS doesn't like the info pulled in from DBA?  Does it write back any corrections for the next time?

Tim, I could add chapters to you book as well    Thanks for all the input.

Tim,
I met w/ my UPS Rep this morning and she is forwarding our info to the Integration Dept. of UPS.  After our conversation, I thought of a few more questions.  Could you tell me how your company handles the following (assuming that BKARINV is the linking table):

• SHIPVIA field is limited to only allows for 15 charactors.
  
• There is not a phone # field.  Do you use a shipping line?
  
• Freight Collect & 3rd Party Billing.
  
• Do you link the City & State or can the Zipcode populate them?

I'm sure all have more questions as time goes by... because I am really excited about the automation.

I'll see what I can contribute;
 
1. The phone number is not stored in the BKARINV file.  To import this would require a link to the BKARCUST file.  My UPS tech did not feel that this link was possible because the join field had to be the same as the lookup field (BKAR_INV_SONUM in our case) and, of course, this field does not exist in BKARCUST.  I wasn't sure that he was correct and thought there should be a way to link BKARINV and BKARCUST using the BKAR_INV_CUSCODE field.  
 
So we can't bring in phone, fax, email or other fields requiring a link.  Maybe your UPS people will figure it out.
 
2. We bring in City, State and ZIP separately but they are validated by UPS.
 
3. We have plans to pick up Ship VIA and Freight Terms in the future but it presents a little challenge.  UPS has discreet Ship Via terms :
 
Next Day Air
2nd Day Air
Ground
...
 
But, in DBA, you can type anything in this field.  You can't pick from a list or use an input mask as far as I know without customization.
 
So we plan to standardize our Ship Via/Terms codes to something that can be passed into UPS via a lookup table:
 
UPSGRDCOL = UPS Ground Collect
UPSREDPPD = UPS Next Day Air Prepaid  
FEDEXPTPB = Fedex Express Third Party Billing
YELSTDPPA = Yellow Freight Standard Prepay and Add  
...
 
It's just tough because we have so many combinations and DBA doesn't have a seperate field for Freight Payment Terms.
 
Also, we're at the whim of the data entry person to type the code accurately.
 
Although it's not perfect, the address import has been a big time saver.

Friday we automated DBA w/ UPS.  Of course, this was only a partial automation since DBA does not have a place for several UPS prompts.
 
What is the possible of ISTS expanding DBA to allow for:

• A place for freight payment terms (prepaid, freight collect, third party, etc.)?
  
• If it's third party, a place for that customer's info. (I know this might be a stretch, but even if it allowed for a CUSTCODE then the shipper could go from there.)
  
• A place for UPS account number?
  
• A place for Ship to phone #, fax # and/or email address?  (We do a lot of drop ships or shipments where the bill to or the ship to is not the person receiving the confirmation).
  
• A place to indicate if it's a residential address?

I'm sure I'm not the only one wanting this... but I would be willing to throw a few $$ in the pot to get this towards the top of the list.

For UPS, we're having nothing but success using the add-on from Addsum accounting. See the website at http://www.addsuminc.com/index.html?ups.htm
 
We are on the January, 2006 update of EVO.