Hi Bob,

Thanks for this request. I can understand the want for only one SCAN form for all packages, regardless of store platform.

Just in case you are interested, I also wanted to alert you to another request one of our customers made a few days ago that is similar, but not identical to your request. If you agree with them on their point, feel free to comment/like that thread, too! The more we see our customers are interested in a feature, the more likely we are to look into offering it.

Thanks!

Just ran into USPS Scan form issue as well. We also do not understand the requirement for different SCAN forms for the packages being picked up. With us it's the unnecessary requirement to create separate SCAN forms for First Class Mail vs. Priority Mail. This likely needs to be communicated back to Endicia and their requirement, but from our perspective as a Customer, there shouldn't be the need to create multiple forms when the USPS SCAN form is designed to handle both Priority and First Class mail accounts on the same form. Even if the accounts are different or sources are different (as the the original post suggests), the purpose of the form should be to group different USPS tracking numbers under one pick up scan and it shouldn't matter which tracking numbers they are, where they came from, etc. These are all USPS tracking numbers so it should be irrelevant. Imagine UPS requiring different manifests for their different shipping services? They don't do that. The form was designed to simplify and speed things up, instead somebody decided apparently that was way to easy so they created additional requirements. Real world example: Say we had 29 First Class mail packages and 1 USPS Priority Package. Your system automatically selected all 30 packages for the form to be created. After the form was created we find out that 29 packages made it to the form, and one didn't. So the system advised us on the error suggesting we need more than one package to create a form because one was left behind. This is obviously logical for not needing the form for one package, but the issue here is that there are 30 packages going out, not one package. In the real world, USPS driver will stop by and scan the USPS SCAN form but they will not bother to look thru all the packages and find that one package that was omitted from the form. Then time goes by and the customer of that package emails us asking where is their stuff. We had numerous packages picked up but then disappear without trace with tracking only showing the label was created. USPS will deny the claim citing no proof of pick up/drop off. And it just happens that the package was not part of the SCAN form. Alright, so now we have to figure out a workaround, and give more instructions to the fulfillment warehouse that does a million things as it to make that one package is scanned separately even thou there is a also a SCAN form that is designed to do just that. They will ask us, well why can't this be added to the form all alone since there is a form that should do just that... we don't know :) Simplicity is key, so can someone please figure it out with Endicia and the redundant requirements? Thank you in advance :)

Hi Ilya,

Thanks for the feedback! I completely understand how this could be a headache. The reason we require two SCAN forms is largely based on ShippingEasy's two-account system with Endicia.

As you may have seen, ShippingEasy requires that you have two separate Endicia accounts. This is so that you can get the best rates possible for each method of shipping. As they are seen as two completely unique accounts and because they are separate, they require individual SCAN forms: one for shipments purchased via - your Endicia First Class account and one for those purchased via your Endicia Expedited account.

While the two-account model provides us the ability to give customers the lowest possible USPS postage rates, I do understand how it would be immensely helpful to be able to combine accounts onto a SCAN form. So, I've gone ahead and logged your feedback. Thanks again!

I see no reason for the fact of using 2 Endicia accounts should require separate SCAN forms.  In my opinion your programmers should be able to combine them for us instead of taking the easy way out of have 2 forms.

Hi Bill - ShippingEasy does not actually create SCAN forms. Rather, these are sent through Endicia's label server. Endicia then processes the request for each Endicia account separately.

To my understanding, Endicia does not run any checks against the two requests to verify that the accounts are held by the same company. Though, it sounds like you would like ShippingEasy to make that information available to Endicia. I can't say that is an option without further research into the Endicia API. However, I can raise the matter with our team to look into.

We would also like a way to print a single scan form combining first class, international and priority mail types. I understand the need to more than one based on location or date, that is fine.

The scan form already has lines for the various USPS postage types, so this seems like an unnecessary waste of paper, toner and time.

If the problem is on Endicia's end, then I would hope you would voice our concern to them and push for a better way.

If there is no direct way to accomplish this, perhaps you could get sneaky and figure out a way to rotate the print orientation of the forms and fit 2 reduced size forms on a single page to be printed.

thanks

Hello Patrick,

Thank you very much for your post. We are looking at any alternatives we may be able to work out with Endicia. As they are two separate Endicia accounts, this is where we run into concerns as the separate accounts are not linked. 

Once we do have an update, we will post it here. We will aslo ask customers with a similar request to post their feedback here as well, it's greatly helpful for us to consider when prioritizing requests. 

Madilynn T. [ShippingEasy Product] 

I wanted to contribute a suggestion to ease the pain of this slightly.  Adobe Acrobat allows printing 2 pages per sheet of paper.  The size is reduced to fit side by side on the length of the paper, but the bar codes still scan fine when the postal carrier picks up the shipment (and she likes it better).  We save paper and it takes half as long to print.

The Acrobat settings stick from one printing to the next since we don't have any reason to print other PDFs from the shipping computer.