Shipping question: Packages per hour?

[george graves]

What's a good ball-park for how many packages one person should be able to in an hour?

- pull the finished item off a shelf
- Package it
- Print postage and label it.
- Send a email with tracking.

I have a feeling the last two steps are my weak link. I'm using paypal. And between the slow, slow servers, and manually generating an email (usually pre-written note I keep in a word document, and then copy and paste in tracking) - I think that's my road block.

I can only seem to do 15-20. Less if you get the person that send the last minuet email saying "oh my address was wrong, please send it to this address instead" kind of thing.

So, just to check my sanity, how many packages per hour do you put out, per person, per hour?

[adafruit]

the juicy automation that will boost your thruput is in in #3 & #4 - try using endicia or similar - we spent a month to have a fully-automated integrated system with barcodes. its work but its worth it if you ship more than 10 items a day!

[crazybutable]

Before I switched to Endicia and printable postage and printable address labels, I could only do 10 packages a day, max. But now I think I could do 10-15 packages an hour on a good day. If the kids are pounding on the door to the workshop while the cat is throwing up in the closet, probably less.

[Rochey]

this is a major thorn in my side.

I run www.expataudio.com with another designer. I am the designated shipper. (joy!)

I set up our online store (using cubecart v3) to only do USPS Flat Rate shipping for customers in the USA. (I'm based in Texas).
That's quite nice, because I can go straight to paypal, and print the label immediately.

However, 70% of my business is from Europe and Asia... which means customs forms... and lots of customers picking first class mail options. (I can't filter international shipping options).

Today, I have to copy/paste each delivery address, describe the contents of the order into an excel template, then run a USPS Customs Form Firefox plugin that generates all the forms for that batch of shipping. Its a slow, painful process.

It would be much better/nicer if I could simply hit "print shipping and customs".

Also - while I'm whining... I looked into Amazon fulfillment. They are great if you are only shipping in the USA. They won't do the customs bit

Any advice?

[phenoptix]

We use a program called packing partner, which was designed for eBay and may be a little UK specific. It's made by these guys http://www.aimcosoftware.co.uk/ and it's well worth the money! It uses integrated labels and you can fully customise your invoices / packing slips and even autofill customs labels. I'm not sure if a US customisation is available though.

With this software I've managed a personal record of 270 orders in an 8 hour packing day, but was accused by my co-worker of cheating as I selected all of the orders for single screw drivers in my pick list. Nearly 34 orders per hour, but most of them were not shipped via tracked services.

Rochey - I remember cutting and pasting addresses, and the reformatting that went with it.