How to add and set up a Billing Account (General) [Step-by-Step guide]

When setting up your Clients in techShip, you will have to configure Billing Accounts to ship through them. These use a Baseline Account as a foundation, but their way to work could be different based on the Client's needs.

When setting Billing Accounts, you will be able to specify how it should work for that specific client, setting label references, packing slips usage, rate shopping, markups, WMS information updating and Carrier options such as the default service level, address validation, sender and return addresses, etc.

This article will approach the generic setup, while others are specifically written for certain Carriers.

Feel free to follow the step-by-step guide written below or the video guide, as you prefer:

To set up a billing account, define the following and then Save:

ADD THE ACCOUNT TO THE CLIENT PROFILE

1. Access Clients under the Maintenance menu



2. Click on the Client for which you wish to set up the billing account

3. Press Add Billing Account

4. Select the source account which will be used and Save

5. Edit the Billing account

SET UP THE GENERAL OPTIONS

The General Options tab is the same for every carrier. If you are already acquainted with it from previous setups, please configure it accordingly.

If this is your first time setup or you aren't acquainted to it, refer to the following article and once finished, return to this one to set up the carrier specific options:

How to configure the Billing Account General Options tab [Step-by-Step guide]

SET UP THE CARRIER OPTIONS (GENERAL)

The Carrier Options tab content varies considerably depending on the account’s Carrier.

These are the key elements for most of them:

A) Default Service Code: Choose a service code to assign to imported orders which don’t have a service code or keep it if they have. If you wish to overwrite any code coming from the WMS with the chosen service, check “Override WMS Service Code”. 
You can choose between the service level that comes with the order, ECO mode which grabs the cheapest service or an arbitrary service level for all cases. You can go in depth on this subject in this article.

B) Billing account number and payment type: Specify which account number is to be billed and how (Prepaid, Sender, Third Party, Collect, etc).

C) Address Validation: Allows you to choose which level of address validation you can use. Not only the address is validated, but take into account that for some carriers detecting residential areas impacts in the charges. Some carriers have a fixed address validation level by default and do not provide options to pick from. If you are not sure of which level would be suitable for you, you can go in depth in this article.

D) Package type: Allows you to specify which Package type you will be using. It could be a specific one or a variable (user provided) depending on the case.

E) Sender Address: By default, techShip automatically uses the address you provided for the Carrier account upon setup as Sender Address. If you wish to keep it, no additional action is needed. If you need to change it follow the instructions here.

F) Return information: By default, techShip automatically uses the address you provided for the Carrier account upon setup as the Return Address. If you wish to keep it, no additional action is needed. If you need to change it follow the instructions here applied to the Return Address checkbox.
Check Print return labels if you will be printing them. 

G) Currency and duties: Specify the currency the account will use as reference and who will be paying for duties charges. In some cases it might require you to fill additional fields.

Press Save to apply the changes. If the information is valid, you'll be able to process orders through it.

SPECIFYING RATE SHOPPING SERVICE CODES (OPTIONAL)

If you are Rate Shopping with this account, you might want to specify which services you want be taken into consideration or excluded. Read this article to set up your inclusion/exclusion list.