Monthly Archives: December 2014

Programming and Web Development

Website development and programming

We all know, it’s hard to do anything without a computer. A computer can’t do anything without software. That’s where we come in. Whether you need a multi-user order processing and inventory system, or a web page for your coffee shop, we can help you find the best balance between investment and benefit. If an existing program will do what you need, we can locate it for you. If there isn’t a pre-built solution, we can create a custom system to meet your requirements.

One of our newest products is the ShipSys shipping system. This is a suite of programs designed to provide inventory, packing slip and label printing services for small businesses. The customer is able to import files from Amazon, eBay, Half.com, Zencart and other sources. Packing slips and pick lists are printed. As the items are shipped, tracking data is captured for reporting back to the source selling system. It is integrated into our Remote Mail Manifesting system to allow low-cost USPS shipping, but also provides support for tracking of other shipping methods. The system can be as simple as one workstation, or can scale to support as many shipping stations as needed, all tied to a central server.

Of course, we have developed many web pages over the years, which often involved importing and converting data from prior versions. Web pages have covered a variety of genres, including business information and promotion sites, product based eCommerce sites, stock and decorative photography sales. We have also built web-based inventory and process control systems that allow multiple sites to share information, and even allow customer access to relevant data (and prevent unauthorized access to the system, or to other customer’s information).

An example of this was called Job Ticket. It was set up for a direct mail shop. It was built as a web page in order to provide online access to inventory and job ticket information from multiple locations and devices. Customers can be allowed access to see their inventory and job status. Office personnel have access defined by their business role (Production, Administration, etc). In this situation, security was crucial, both to prevent unauthorized access to the system, and to prevent one customer from gaining access to information related to another customer.

 

USPS Rules and Technology Consulting

Keeping up with the USPS is a moving target. Their rules and technology are constantly shifting. This presents dangers and opportunities to any business involved in mail or parcel shipping.

We’ve been writing programs and developing procedures to meet USPS regulations since the 1980’s. We know what works, and how fast we have to move when things change. More than that, we know who to ask if we need to clarify a rule, or resolve a dispute in what a rule means.

Want to start a mail house, move your mailing services in house, find the best rate for a new project, or just need help in lowering your distribution costs? Talk to us before you mail, you’ll be glad you did.

We provide USPS Mail Presort and data processing services for a large number of printers, publishers, and mailers. In general, the customer provides a data file, and we process it through in-house and commercial software to provide USPS documentation and label or invoice output (usually PDF files for customer printing).

One of the highlights of this service is our Remote Mail Manifesting service. In this, customers send data files to our systems. They are automatically sorted and prepared as a manifesting mailing. Data files are returned to the customer and transmitted to USPS.

All of these services are pay as you go, saving our customers thousands of dollars in terms of software purchases and license fees, not to mention the postage savings from USPS rules compliance and optimization.