When setting up your Clients in techShip, you will have to configure Billing Accounts for them to operate with and through.


By setting up the Billing Accounts, you will be able to specify how the account should work for that 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.


The General Options tab is always the same, regardless of the Carrier you're setting up. With time, when setting up billing accounts you will become used to setting up the General Options, and will just have to learn how to set up the Carrier Options tab, detailed in each individual carrier article.


This article applies to every carrier, and describes the procedure to set up the General Options.


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



To do so:


In the General options tab the key elements are:



A) References: Choose the references that need to be shown in the labels and in which order. If you choose options from the dropdown the values will be variable depending on the order, but if you need to show a fixed value (a warehouse or account code for example) you can type whichever value is needed into the Reference fields. More details can be found here.


WARNING: Not every carrier supports using all the available references. Check the CARRIER SUPPORTED REFERENCES TABLE section of the article linked above.


B) Rate Shopping: Check for techShip to consider this account when you are Rate Shopping for this client. 


You might also check Skip rate shopping failures; If this control is:

  • Checked: If this account is involved in a Rate Shopping process and rating fails, the account will be ignored and Rate Shopping will go on including the other carriers' options
  • Not checked: If this account is involved in a Rate Shopping process, the whole order Rate Shopping will get halted until this account can provide a rate 

More details on additional setup elements can be found here:




WARNING: Rate Shopping is currently NOT compatible with Dangerous Goods shipping. 


C) Include Packing Slips: Check if you are going to use Packing slips together with your labels. A set of additional fields allow you to choose a default or custom packing slip model, Merge the Packing Slip with the Carrier label (printed in a custom - usually 8 1/2" x 11" - label), or set the ship from information through the Packing Slips Config tab. More details can be found here.


D) Closing or updating the WMS: Specify which actions should take place to update your wms when the orders are manifested.

The possible scenarios are:

  • Close orders in WMS: When you manifest your WMS gets updated with the order information and closes them as well.

  • Update orders in WMS: Shown when Close orders in WMS is disabled, when you manifest your WMS gets updated with the order information, yet you will have to close them manually on the WMS side.

  •  Update freight in WMS (Optional): Updates the freight information in the WMS as well as the regular information.

E) Markups: You can set up your markups for this client and account as a percentage, a fixed value, or both (they add if you use both fields); markups are added when you push the information to the WMS (for a detailed description more details can be found here)

F) Signature required: Specify if signature is required or not. By default techShip takes the order information, yet you can force it to enable/disable it for all orders.


G) Validation: Depending on the option selected, it will validate if the orders going through the Billing Account qualify as International shipments or 


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.