Many methods and properties have been updated within the UPS API in the past few months. With the constant changes, you might be going back and forth with your IT resources to ensure you have the latest certificates installed to keep business from being interrupted. If you are an auditor, shipping consultant or transportation analytics company you could be spending more money than ever to manage the changes. Not to mention making the necessary updates and contacting technical support consumes valuable time.
What are UPS APIs?
The purpose of UPS Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) are to make shipping easier and processes faster. Developers take UPS software and integrate it into their business applications or websites. These APIs facilitate calls to a server and provide seamless experiences.
An example of a recent change includes a Metric System Length Increase. For shipments originating outside the United States, the maximum length expands from 270cm to 274cm. Since Package Shipping and Rating APIs are impacted, interfaces would need to be changed to take advantage of the length increase.
UPS has 14 functionalities via APIs available and some are:
- Tracking API: The Tracking API gives customers the ability to track their shipments from an e-commerce site using a reference or order number.
- Time-in-Transit API: The Time-in-Transit API lets users compare the speed of delivery of different services so they can pick the best service for a shipment.
- Shipping API: The Shipping API supports the integration of UPS’s shipping functionality across enterprise systems and websites.
- Pickup API: Shippers can schedule a UPS pickup from their home or office.
Keeping up with ever-changing UPS APIs is exhausting, especially for business process outsourcing companies that use the APIs to add value for customers through data insight and data analytics. For such companies, minor changes have a large change management requisite and can cause service delays and even outages. Fortunately, there’s a better way.
About the Share A Refund API
Share A Refund offers a robust API to all customer types. Each is classified by customer type below and a common use-case for each customer. Learn more
Direct customer API
Get cost data on all shipments billed across all carrier accounts from a single endpoint. Final cost data is difficult to aggregate. EDI integration is common for large volume shippers. The common alternative, and only method for small businesses and the like, is to download flat files from the online billing tools provided by the carriers. This must be done for each carrier, standardized into a common format, collated to determine final cost by package. The process is a full-time job and can be streamlined with the Share A Refund API.
Businesses that reseller carrier rates, commonly defined as a passthrough program, use the Share A Refund API to get final cost data on each shipment. This eliminates the need to put each customer on a different account number, as the separation can be done with the data retrieved through the Share A Refund API.
Reseller API
Auditors, insurance brokers, and parcel consultants use the Share A Refund API to add value to existing, legacy products and services. Integrating with each carrier and maintaining a complex codebase is a full-time job. System administration for such businesses is outsourced and a contract spend is at an all-time high.
Such expenses can be reduced through write integrations to the Share A Refund API. Changes made by carriers are abstracted into formats standardized across all carrier types. The API is one of many services provided to Resellers as a part of the Share A Refund Reseller Program.
