Import Orders on a schedule
We would like to set a schedule of when it could import our orders similar to auto-periodically, but the feature of putting the time of when shipstation automatically start importing orders. This would save us 30 to 60 mins.
KevinBeyond
shared this idea
Hi, @KevinBeyond! Thanks for taking the time to bring this up. At this time, we’re not looking to add this function in the near future, but we’d like to hear more about your current workflow.
Can you elaborate on what you mean by saving 30 – 60 minutes of time if you were able to choose when your orders import?
Here’s some background info on how our automatic updates work: https://help.shipstation.com/hc/en-us/articles/206638707
Please be sure to comment here in the forum so other users can understand and add their votes, too!
14 comments
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Nicolas Heady Bride and Bow, LLC
commented
Hello everyone!
I just completed an app for myself that updates/syncs my stores every few minutes (frequency can be changed). It runs on the cloud and is completely automated. If you're interested in signing up, please contact me at WeddingsByMae@Gmail.com.
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Anika Bernstein Drive Fulfillment - ASN
commented
I love ShipStation and brag about it, honestly! One feature, though, that I'm still trying to figure out is how to override the timing of orders imports from our store(s). I learned from a customer service rep. that these are imported based on an algorithm and the more we "refresh" our imports, the system will learn how often we'd like orders imported. It makes sense to me if we could choose how often we'd like orders to be imported into the platform and override any other automations, or even edit this automation. Is this possible?
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Mark B.
commented
Most marketplaces e.g. Amazon, eBay, Walmart etc, all require orders to be processed by a certain time e.g. 2pm EST. It'd be helpful to have a 'last sync' option, where one could set the final import for the day to say 1:59pm EST. That way if one is busy and forgot to manually sync orders in the last minute, this automated sync schedule would catch that.
Separately, the automatic updates aren't very helpful, because often customers change their minds e.g. ordered the wrong size, used the incorrect address, decided to cancel their order etc. Our experience has shown that a seller typically needs to control the sync manually, as opposed to let ShipStation automatically sync orders.
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msklut
commented
We were about to become ShipStation customers, but after testing the platform for several weeks the delay for new orders to import is unacceptable. We've used the manual refresh feature, but it still takes up to 10 minutes to import a recent order. For us, the difference between 'instant' and 'up to 10 minutes' matters. It becomes a domino effect... Especially when our packages are picked up every day at a set time by our mail carrier. We can't afford to wait 10 minutes for an order to show up.
If our shipping department is unable to print labels because ShipStation cannot 'refresh in time' that's a problem. Please look into ways to tighten up the integration with e-commerce platforms (like OpenCart), so there's not such long delays...
If it wasn't for this, we'd sign up today. Everything else was solid. That's the only issue.
Ecommerce platform: OpenCart v. 3.0.2.0
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eCommerce Manager
commented
Your background info on how automatic updates work only details the way the feature is supposed to be turned on. The feature itself doesn't work at all!
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Caleb Kirby Zeia Foods, LLC
commented
It would be great if users could choose the frequency or exact timing of updates rather than leaving it up to an algorithm. I see that for some, updating close to real time is not ideal, but for our business, the sooner the better on orders appearing. Giving the user flexibility with this would be so much better than trusting the mysteries of an algorithm.
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uneeksupply
commented
It would save us 30-60 minutes a day if we could set the orders to update at a specific time.
It takes 30-60 minutes for the alerts to let us know what orders to combine. And about this much time for Skuvault to update shipstation with the product locations.
I don't want periodic updates through the day because we ship once a day and don't want to see the next days orders.
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ryan stabile Supplements for Work
commented
This is extremely important to the longevity of our company because, without a feature like this, many customers are not getting their orders on time and are therefore leaving our company and purchasing from other companies.
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ryan stabile Supplements for Work
commented
Our company would love to see this very simple feature added as well.
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Paul Doggett Mug Heaven Pottery
commented
I've added shipstation on our Big Commerce store. On this venue, it would be nice to have orders import totally automated, perhaps on a automatic schedule. As a small online business owner, I will have periods of time (several hours in a day) where I may not be able to login to my shipstation account and click on the import your orders button. This can make the difference of an order being shipped that day or not. My orders are automatically remitted to my dropshippers once imported.
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shawn
commented
for us, we'd just like it to go in and pull orders before we stop processing orders for the day to make sure someone didn't make a rush order that we'd miss. obviously we can manually do this, but we could also manually do everything in life--that's the glory of technology.
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Hey @Andrew, thank you for chiming in and for providing that example. Just to clarify, it isn't that your orders aren't automatically importing at all but it's that they aren't importing as frequent. Is that correct?
And there are 2 ways for you to find out you have new eBay orders, directly from the eBay site, and from ShipStation Companion. Is that also correct?
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Andrew
commented
We have a terrible problem with your service. Your algorithm does not do an adequate job of automatically importing orders. We know it's based on historical sales but recently we've seen an increase (over 2 months) in sales through our eBay channel, yet we're only aware of these sales because we check eBay. Shipstation does not automatically update nearly 90% of our orders and we have to sync them into the system. What's the purpose of having push notifications on the mobile app if the system never pulls our orders from our channels in a timely fashion?
This is a huge problem, the fact that your company repeatedly states that they're not interested in fixing or improving this problem is a huge put off and would be a reason we would leave for a competitor. Especially considering your lack of inventory management options (*which we've been hearing are in the works for over a year now).
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ryanleber
commented
This feature would be incredibly useful for those using multiple online stores, but aren't open on weekends. Let me give an example: let's say a company has an eBay store, and amazon store, and a bigcommerce store. They aren't open on weekends, so that makes Monday's incredibly busy (once things get going). Even if someone gets in right at 8:30 am on Monday morning to start the import for all three stores, the last store won't finish importing until 9:30 or even 10:00. If it were possible to schedule an import for a specific time, they could have it start automatically at 7:30 or 8:00 am. Then, it would already be done (or would be shortly) by the time everybody showed up for work, and nobody would be sitting around for an hour doing nothing while waiting for orders from the weekend to synchronize.