Business Shipping Tips

All businesses ship things at one point or another, whether it is products from manufacturers, direct mail advertisements, invoices or other paper documents. It's important to know a thing or two about shipping things as a business, since you'll want to have all shipped items accounted for. This will help you make sure you don't cost the company a lot of money, you have your packages insured when appropriate, and you get them delivered on time. Here are a few business shipping tips that'll give you a better idea of what you're in store for when you get started.

Track All Orders

To make sure your products have been delivered on time, to the right parties, and didn't get lost or returned to the sender, it's crucial that you have tracking on all your orders. If you don't track your shipments and are shipping tons of things each day, something's bound to get lost and some external party will absolutely be furious, so it's worth having all the data you can on the shipments you make and so you have some idea of what went wrong with shipments.

Get a Business Account

As a business, you should sign up to receive a business account with big shipping companies like UPS, DHL or FedEx where you can get great discounts on all the shipments you make, free and discounted packaging materials, free tracking, expedited shipping and shipping during the holidays. With a business account, you also have an account representative that will help support you in any issues you have with your shipments, which will give you more leverage than if you're a regular consumer with one issue about one shipment.

Insure Shipments Wisely

Many businesses and consumers warn about insuring shipments which can raise flags with the shipping companies and thieves who are more likely to steal the insured packages versus normal packages. Insurance on low value shipments can be costly too, since you have to pay for the extra service of shipment insurance, plus you have to file a lot of paperwork in claiming money if the shipment is lost, damaged or destroyed. All the hassle in filing the claim and trying to retrieve money may not even be worth the final value of the product lost. You should only insure shipments if the product is incredibly expensive, hard to replace, or can be easily damaged, otherwise, just ship the product with some careful packaging and tracking information.

Know Customs Regulations

If you are shipping things internationally, it will be helpful to know about customs regulations. You will need to budget extra time and funds because you may run into issues with local customs officials holding packages, adding to the length until final delivery time, and because countries may have import fees that will have to be paid on purchases from overseas. While it may make a lot of sense from a raw costs perspective to manufacture products overseas, importing product into another country can be incredibly costly, cutting deeply into your profits and revenue.