NPP is sharing this informative blog from the Pitney Bowes website. You can find the original post here.
From weighing packages and finding the correct addresses to printing labels and shopping for the best rates from the major carriers, shipping has never been more complicated and expensive. If you own or work in a small- to mid-size organization without a centralized mailroom, you know how inefficient this process can be.
But it doesn’t have to be that way.
PitneyShip™ Portfolio shipping solutions brings order to the chaos, streamlining your shipping operations and making it easier for you to reduce your expenses and increase your productivity. Discover a few of the ways you can simplify your shipping with the PitneyShip Portfolio below, and see which options fit best for your needs.
1. Leave the post office behind by printing postage at home
Time is money, as the old saying goes. While it’s great that your customers are ordering your products, standing in line at the post office and waiting to weigh and label all your packages isn’t a profitable use of your time. That’s where PitneyShip comes in. Buy and print postage from your own computer, weigh your items (we’ll provide the scale) and track your items from the post office to your customers’ front doors, all in one place. With all the work done before you even get to the post office, you’ll breeze through before you even know it.
2. Choose a shipping option that works best for your situation
Not only does our platform streamline your shipping process, it also helps you save. Instead of shopping rates individually between USPS®, UPS® and FedEx®, PitneyShip portal consolidates it all in a way that’s easy to find the most cost-effective option. Search by package type, recipient location, pickup date, delivery date, and even options specific to the recipient (such as morning delivery). Then select the best option for each package you’re sending, a process that will take a fraction of the time it would have before. The PitneyShip Portfolio takes out all the guesswork, allows you manage your expenses and gives you and your employees more time to sell more products and provide service to your customers.
That’s a win-win, in our book.
3. Make costly address errors a thing of the past with the help of a shipping software
Look hard enough and you’ll find typos everywhere. Just because they are common doesn’t mean they are not expensive, especially when you are shipping. A simple extra letter or a missing number in a street address can cost you more than $13 per piece with some carriers. That’s where the PitneyShip Portfolio universal address book comes in. Add a new recipient’s information into the address book and it will always be available to you in the future. The PitneyShip Portfolio even standardizes and validates addresses, ensuring you are always using the correct address every time you send a package.
Already have your own address book? Import them directly into the PitneyShip Portfolio as CSV files and you’ll be all set within just a few clicks.
4. Manage your mailing expenses
How much are you or your organization spending to ship each quarter? Trying to answer that question, especially if you ship with multiple carriers, can be a time-consuming affair. Just as the PitneyShip Portfolio offers a one-stop shop for comparing rates, it compiles a history of your shipments and expenditures so you can have a clear understanding of how much is being spent and where. Integrate the PitneyShip Portfolio with your own accounting software; track costs by client, department, user or other parameters; and create and send invoices. Knowledge is power and having all this information in one place gives you even greater control over mailing and shipping expenses across your organization.
5. Consolidate your entire shipping process
Browse rates from the major carriers, track packages, work from a unified address book and much more, all in a single account. Whether you’re the only sender or one of many in your organization, the PitneyShip Portfolio brings all your shipping processes together in one place. Not the only shipper in your business? Assign each employee access appropriate to their job function. Out of the office? No problem. Control and monitor your PitneyShip account through the mobile app, which can sync with your Windows People app to pull contact information from Outlook, Gmail and LinkedIn InMail. You can even print shipping labels through the app, as it is integrated with the PitneyShip postal scale.
Which PitneyShip Portfolio is right for you?
Whether you’re a small business owner or you work in a larger organization, there’s a PitneyShip Portfolio that will fit your needs. PitneyShip is an all-in-one software solution ideal for small businesses that allows you to print discounted USPS stamps, compare USPS, UPS and FedEx shipping rates and print shipping labels. Plus it includes a free scale with a capacity of up to 10 pounds.
Larger businesses with more complex shipping operations will find PitneyShip Enterprise the perfect match. Manage shipping activity across a vast number of users, automate the charge-back process to client accounts or departments and monitor the sending activity across the organization to identify savings opportunities.
The world is becoming more connected by the day. Our shipping and mailing, e-commerce and analytics solutions; financial and business services; and enterprise software are just a few of the ways we help you navigate a constantly evolving global business environment.