We've been a T-Hub patron for several years now and we're growing increasingly frustrated with their lack of tech support (even though we pay a tidy sum of money every month for exactly that.) So I'm trying to see if there is another way to accomplish our goals here. I just spoke to Scott at CartSpan and he said they handle everything except for shipping, which is perhaps the only saving grace that T-Hub does correctly. He mentioned using a 3rd party shipping platform such as ShipStation or similar. I'm a bit concerned about the integration of 4 different platforms to achieve what I thought should be a pretty easy process. Does anyone have any suggestions as to how they do it or how to best accomplish the goals of of both shipping and depositing order data into Quickbooks?

Thanks

Hi

I know quite a few people use Shipstation here so maybe they can give you some feedback on that.

Andy

Please feel free to review / rate our software

Andy,

Shipstation doesn't list ECT as a direct partner. Have you seen people connect ECT directly to Shipstation, or is there always a connector in the middle (T-Hub/Cartspan)?

Thanks

If you ship more than a few packages a day, ship station would be the best thing you have added in a long time. It is wonderful.
This thread should help - https://www.ecommercetemplates.com/support/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=104205

That's exactly what I was looking for, thank you!!

We use Shipstation and it's great. Took some fiddling to get the XML working properly, and I can share ours if you run into problems with it.

I'm very curious about CartSpan. I used T-Hub many years ago and disliked it and its lack of support. We switched to Z-Axis but it's very basic and there is a lot of cleanup to be done after importing. CartSpan sounds great on paper but I'm wary of all the buzzwords and hype of their website, and that I can't find a video of it actually in use. What do you think of it? Once you've tried, will you post here how good it is?

After quite a while of looking at quickbooks connectors, we went with t-hub.
For the most part it works fine. We only use it for moving orders from ect into qb.
$30.00/mo plan.

The single issue we have with it is orders are not filled in sequence, so we have to go in and set the order number back a bit when importing. We import orders once a day at the end of the day.

I just had Phil (Bettapages) update our store and move us to a new server, and apparently that broke T-Hub. I've had a ticket open for [red]8[/red] days with zero resolution. Today I opted to fire T-Hub and I subscribed to ShipStation and a CartSpan installation is in the works. From what I see so far, ShipStation is already a quality of life upgrade (thanks dbdave) as we can ship everything from a single screen instead of exporting to UPS. T-Hub was nice when it worked, but their support gets worse and their prices go up. Seems contrary to how things should work.

Fingertech, I will definitely report back with my findings on Cartspan. I hope to have it installed by the first of the year.

dbdave, regarding that order sequencing on T-Hub, isn't that just the most ridiculous way to go about that? If two people are entering orders and the first person holds their order open too long, it can completely skip the first person's order if the second completes their order first. I'm dumbfounded as to how that functionality was ever considered viable.

I think I agree with you on all points and I would like to hear about your experience with cartspan.

As for ship station, I have made some changes here and there to my liking, so hit me up if you need help.
I also use their "scan to print" feature. We have a barcode on the warehouse pick ticket that is the order ID. We scan that barcode and get a shipping label back in a few seconds.
Literally, it is pulling up the order, weighing, and creating a label, emailing the customer, and updating the order status all in those few seconds.

Hi dbdave,

I am trying to get the xml working for shipstation and would love to take you up on your offer. Please let me know

Thanks, Chris

Hi Chris, that was Fingertech that offered to share their version.
Really, there is nothing wrong with the connector if you have the one from Dean.
The number one issue I have heard with ect users connecting Dean's script is in ship station you must be 100% accurate in setting the names of your status types that you use in your store admin.

In the end, Dean and Shipstation will be your official sources for support on this, but I can probably help you troubleshoot if you want to post up the steps you've taken and the results (or errors) your getting.
I don't think sharing my version would help, as it would be the same as yours (with a few small hacks I made unrelated to setup of the script).

Hi dbdave,

And dean is ecom webstore? It doesn't look like its in operation. I've tried emailing ecom webstore with no response. Shipstation has no clue.

Thanks, Chris

Yes, I haven't seen Dean posting here in some time.
I'm not sure what's up there.

Ship Station is usually very helpful. They may be able to give you some error they see behind the scenes that would be helpful.

Why not describe the problem here and let see if I or other ship station users can get you up and running.

Hi Chris,

I connected my 3 ECT stores to shipstation recently and the stumbling block as Dave says was mapping the order status. Unfortunately it’s not clearly explained in Dean’s download.

In Shipstation go to selling channels / custom store. Take particular care with option 3:

“3. Map your Custom Store's Order Statuses to ShipStation by placing them in the relevant fields below.
Separate multiple statuses with a comma.”

These must be EXACTLY the same as you have in ECT admin or it will not work. Usually these are something like ‘shipped’ or ‘completed’. Don’t duplicate any. Then use the “Test connection”. If that works all will be fine.

As regards Dean, if you need to contact him, try searching his user name on this forum and send him an email that way.

Do persevere with Shipstation though, it’s brilliant! As Dave says, you can automate pretty much everything. It’ll save you time and money.

Steve

Years ago, we tried without success to find a decent shopping cart that integrates well with QuickBooks. We tested some truly awful carts that claimed to integrate well with QuickBooks, and eventually ditched every one.

At that point our CPA gave us the advice to go with the best cart - which we found to be ECT - and create a process to download the orders from the cart as a spreadsheet, using Excel to format and filter that data so that it can be easily entered into QuickBooks as an inventory adjustment dated the last day of each month. This gives QuickBooks our COGS (cost of goods sold) for the month. We also use the process to track sales taxes payable to our state.

Unfortunately our business has grown to the point where that Excel workbook has become unwieldy. Today that workbook consists of 14 (!) different spreadsheets for entering, converting and tracking business data. The workbook now tracks not only ECT orders, monthly COGS and sales taxes payable for QuickBooks, but also stock levels so we know when to reorder components, open component POs not yet received, adhoc inventory adjustments (say, for damaged and returned goods), and other metrics.

While our process works very smoothly, there's a giant drawback: only one person really knows how to maintain and update that complicated Excel workbook. All of those critical activities - monthly QuickBooks close, reordering inventory, setting up new items for sale, etc. - can't happen without that one person's involvement. So there's a huge potential for disruption if that person is unavailable.

As a colleague told me, "your business is worthless if it can't operate without any one person."

I'd be really interested to hear how others are handling this issue.

We also use ShipStation, BTW.

Edited to add:

The manufacturing versions of QuickBooks (QuickBooks Premier), intended to track component parts used in manufacturing, are unusable in my opinion. That's why we use the more basic 'QuickBooks Pro' and rely on Excel to calculate component PO requirements based on downloaded cart data.

Our CPA told us NOT to import every cart transaction and customer detail into QuickBooks, as this becomes a huge mess unless you're a wholesale business that deals with a very small number of repeat customers. We use QuickBooks Pro mainly to track the total number of components sold each month, issue purchase orders and checks for our suppliers, calculate sales taxes payable, reconcile our bank statements and track profit and loss.