Starship/ShipGear

[MacolaHelp]

Anyone here use these products? I've had MANY issues lately with their 7.2b product & introduction of GTC for carrier communications & they are taking 3-4 days at best to return calls if at all. I'm thinking of starting a forum on this to get some answers a little faster. If this works for you, post a reply & I'll find out what it involves.

 

[vbajock]

I have a client who is having trouble with a similar program that I am beginning to think is probably Starship sold under a different label. Does yours interface Quickbooks and some type of UPS point of sale machine? Do you have to go through a nasty process to link it to Quickbooks, usually always resulting in a support call that has a four hour hold time, where you end up talking to an idiot who tells you to call a different number ? If this sounds right, we are probably talking to the same support center. They just rolled this app out to thousands of clients. My guess is the support center is jammed, because their install program sucks.

 

[MacolaHelp]

starship/shipgear does integrate to many acct packages including quick books, though my primary focus is macola. Since I have had such delayed call backs/on site issues, I am wondering if we can share knowledge on this subject so we can all get up & running sooner without waiting for their response. If you are interested in this forum, I will find out how to do it. Some of my clients use this shipping system in a "non-traditional" manner, using fulfillment & import options that the program has limited scope in handling effectively. Every day I find a new "gotch-ya" that makes me wonder how they ever thought the program was robust enough to handle these issues.

 

[tpllc]

I'm also a Macola reseller. I just did my first install last week. I did have some issues and do have a couple of unresolved items but in general things went well. I would think it is a great idea to start a forum to share experiances and solutions.

Steve Henley
trianglepartners.com
Exact Software consulting, sales and implementations.

 

[MacolaHelp]

I did find a place to request an additional forum, but no one from tek tips has replied as yet. I guess we can just post here, but I was hoping to get some of the other resellers to participate who integrate to other accounting packages, thinking we would get a broader knowledge base on general functionality questions.

 

[tpllc]

I now have several client using this product. Their tech support is slow to respond but helpful once they get involved. Once I got past the initial setup the product seems to work fine and the writeback to Exact is a real timesaver as well as the freight writeback. If you have specific questions you can post here and I'll try and help.

Steve Henley
trianglepartners.com
Exact Software consulting, sales and implementations.

 

[MacolaHelp]

I have 4 starship sites & 2 shipgear & am getting ready to do another one after my issues are resolved.

In SQL ShipGear, I cannot print a report from a Front Office client on xp or win2k. I reported this on Win98 in June, 2002 (reports ran but tracking numbers were cut off). We gave up then & are trying again. I get error 599 on start print on any SG report run from Front Office. V-Tech says it is losing connection to the server. I have been trying to resolve this since 3/6 & the client is an $80 million company, so they expect results they aren't getting. I have another thing to try via VPN tonight to try SQL authentication instead of windows, but I am not hopeful. . .

Starship is having challenges with writing all shipment charges to the transhd & transim files when multiple packages of the same weight are shipped that seem to be related to using the "next" key & primarily for fedex low volume. I initially reported this on 2/10 & have it occuring now at 2 sites. They basically just ignore my emails asking for a fix. I spent almost an entire day testing & documenting why the problem occurred & they haven't even responded to my information.

The third party billing address/company name, etc is supposed to get fixed this week. Try importing in a csv file of hundreds of shipments & have the thrill of entering the third party billing info on each shipment one at a time! There are a number of fields that are not available on the import process that are needed or available in the generic shipping screen. I've had to reinstall the program a minimum of 3 times on this version 7.2 build at every site. I wouldn't object so much, except that I have had no luck getting a call back while on site since the slammer worm hit the internet in January. If I get a response back within 5 business days to an email or phone call, I feel like I'm royalty!

If you have anyone using these "additional" features of SS/SG including email notification, we can probably help each other out quite a bit. As long as the only thing you do is process shipments tied to orders & don't try to automate the freight write back to orders, life is good. Anything more complex seems frought with pitfalls.

I look forward to chatting with you.