How to add and set up a USPS (Pitney Bowes) Billing Account [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 describes the procedure to set up a USPS via Pitney Bowes billing account, while others are specifically written for other Carriers.

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

To set up a USPS 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 

The Carrier Options tab allows to set up basic and advanced features of your USPS billing account.

These are the key elements:

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) Shipper ID: Complete with your Pitney Bowes shipper ID.

C) Sender name and Company: Specify the Sender Name and Sender Company (at least the first is required). You can also override the sender address (by default techShip will use the one defined on the source Carrier account) to an address different from the source. To do so, follow the steps from this article.

D) Contact Phone and e-mail: Specify the phone number and e-mail associated with this billing account and its handling. 

E) Currency code: Allows you to choose the currency which should be used for the account.

F) Address Validation: Allows you to choose which level of address validation you can use.

G) Parcel 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.

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.