Business Central Shipping: Real-Time Rates, Labels, and Tracking in One Workspace

Introduction and Agenda

Hey, good morning or good afternoon everyone. This is Mark here. Today we’re going to talk about doing shipping effectively in Business Central.

To get started, we’ll very briefly go through some background on who Insight Works is, especially if you’ve never heard of us before. We’ll talk about the different shipping applications and, more importantly, the different fulfillment applications. Shipping is almost the last thing you do in fulfillment, but there’s a lot more to it than just getting stuff out the door with a carrier.

After that, we’ll jump into the demo. That’s where we’ll spend most of our time, actually looking at the software and how it works. We’ll wrap up by talking about some pricing details at the end.

About Insight Works

A little bit about Insight Works. We’ve been around for just over 10 years now. We do a lot of work in manufacturing, warehousing, and shipping.

These are slightly older stats, but we’re doing between $75 and $100 million worth of shipping labels a year through Dynamic Ship. On top of that, there’s a significant amount of LTL shipping that we handle as well, which we’ll talk about today.

We also do a lot of work on the warehousing side, which is obviously closely related to shipping. If you’re in manufacturing, we have a wide range of manufacturing tools, production scheduling tools, data capture tools, and other capabilities that you may need for Business Central.

Free and Core Applications Overview

The stack of blocks you see represents many of our applications. A good subset of these are available for free. While it says 30 free apps and add-ons, it’s actually more than that now.

Some of the key free applications can be installed directly from AppSource. If you’re on Business Central Cloud, you can grab these apps with no registration required. You just install them and start using them.

The Enhanced Planning Worksheet and the Forecasting Worksheet are free for a single concurrent user. You can also purchase a paid version for unlimited users, but for most organizations, a single user is sufficient. These provide better planning and forecasting tools than the standard Business Central worksheets.

We also offer a set of more technical tools, such as cloud printing, data management, and barcode printing. These are typically used by partners or internal technical teams.

At the core, we have applications like Graphical Scheduler for drag-and-drop scheduling, Doc Extender for document management with SharePoint integration, and several shipping and warehousing solutions.

OrderShip Express and WMS Express

OrderShip Express is a free shipping application. While the shipping itself isn’t free, the app is. It gives you discounted shipping rates and takes about 10 minutes to set up.

It allows you to print shipping labels, get tracking numbers, and capture shipping costs directly within Business Central. The main limitations are that it’s domestic parcel only and supports up to three carriers at a time.

WMS Express is a free warehouse management solution that supports barcode scanning for receiving, picking, moving inventory, and cycle counts. For many organizations, it’s all they’ll ever need for basic warehouse operations.

Fulfillment and the Order Fulfillment Worksheet

When we talk about fulfillment, it really starts with the Order Fulfillment Worksheet. This is almost a must-have for any medium-volume organization or anyone dealing with e-commerce orders.

Most warehouses have someone who shows up in the morning asking what needs to ship today. This worksheet answers that question automatically. It shows what can ship today, what’s backordered, and what backorders have been fulfilled based on receipts.

It dynamically allocates inventory to orders based on rules like shipment date or order value. You can sort by date, dollar amount, or other criteria and automatically generate picks and shipments either interactively or through job queues.

Generating Picks and Preparing for Shipping

Once picks are generated, warehouse staff can pick using WMS Express or Warehouse Insight. Picked items are then brought to a packing station to generate shipping labels.

In simpler environments, or even high-volume ones with only one or two carriers, OrderShip Express is often sufficient. From a sales order, you can generate shipping labels in just a few clicks.

You can view rates, apply markups, remove options like signature requirements, and bill shipping to a third-party account if needed. Labels can be printed automatically using PrintNode without previewing them in the browser.

Dynamic Ship Overview

When you need more advanced capabilities, that’s where Dynamic Ship comes in. It supports parcel, LTL, full truckload, and international shipping.

Dynamic Ship provides multi-carrier rate shopping, label generation, bills of lading, address validation, packaging workflows, and integration with EDI providers.

Address validation can be triggered automatically at various points, such as when releasing a sales order or creating a customer or ship-to address.

Packaging and Barcode Scanning

Dynamic Ship is often used at a packaging station. Staff can scan an order number, select packaging, and scan items into boxes or pallets.

Barcode scanning ensures accuracy and eliminates mis-shipments. If the wrong item is scanned, the system stops the process immediately.

Weights can be calculated automatically from item data or read from a connected scale. Lot and serial numbers can be captured at shipping time, providing traceability without requiring full warehouse tracking.

Label Printing and Customer Notifications

Once packages are complete, labels are generated and printed automatically. Each package has its own tracking number, along with a master tracking number for the shipment.

Dynamic Ship can automatically email customers with tracking information. These emails can be customized and include PDFs such as packing slips or invoices.

Customers receive branded tracking pages that look like your website, rather than being redirected to a carrier site.

International Shipping and Customs

For international shipments, Dynamic Ship handles commercial invoices and customs data electronically. Item values, weights, tariff codes, and countries of origin are pulled directly from Business Central.

Once certified, the information is transmitted to the carrier and customs is cleared electronically. Carrier-branded or Business Central–generated commercial invoices can be printed as needed.

Miscellaneous Shipments

Dynamic Ship also supports miscellaneous shipments that aren’t tied to sales orders. You can manually enter addresses or select vendors, contacts, or warehouse locations.

This is useful for internal transfers, document shipments, or any ad hoc shipping needs.

LTL and Freight Shipping

LTL and truckload shipping follow the same basic workflow. Dynamic Ship can request real-time quotes from dozens of carriers simultaneously.

Once a carrier is selected, the shipment is registered, bills of lading are generated, pallet labels can be printed, and pickups can be scheduled electronically.

You can specify accessorials, equipment types, dock details, and pickup times directly within Business Central.

EDI Integration

Dynamic Ship integrates with major EDI providers such as SPS Commerce, TrueCommerce, and VANtree. These providers pick up package-level data and generate ASNs automatically.

Multi-level packaging is supported, including pallets, cartons, and items. EDI labels can be printed either through the EDI provider or directly from Business Central using customizable Word templates.

Pricing and Implementation

OrderShip Express is completely free. Dynamic Ship is licensed per shipping location, not per user. The first location is full price, with significant discounts for additional locations.

Implementation is typically handled by partners, but fixed-price implementation services are also available, covering setup, training, and UAT support.

Freight integrations may involve third-party API providers such as EasyPost, FreightView, or Banyan. Some offer free tiers or bundled pricing when used with Dynamic Ship.

Closing Remarks

If you have additional questions, feel free to contact us through our website or talk to your Business Central partner about pricing and setup.

Thanks everyone for attending. I hope this was useful, and I look forward to seeing you on the next webinar.