ShipStation 

Introduction 

ShipStation is a web-based shipping and fulfillment software. Amongst a host of features, ShipStation helps you:

• Automate fulfillment for shippable orders
• Print labels for shipping
• Validate shipping addresses
• Benefit from discounted shipping rates
• Split or merge orders
• Manage your inventory

Chargebee's ShipStation integration automatically moves new orders created in Chargebee into ShipStation and performs a two-way sync for such orders between the platforms. So while Chargebee takes care of billing your customers, their shippable orders are easily communicated to ShipStation for fulfillment.

Note:
ShipStation is only available for customers in US, Canada, Australia and UK.

Order Status Mapping 

The table shows how order statuses in Chargebee and ShipStation are mapped to each other during syncing:

The Syncing Process 

When the sync runs, whether manual or auto sync, the following steps take place:

1. Queued orders in Chargebee are moved into ShipStation.
2. Changes made to previously synced orders are updated from Chargebee to ShipStation and vice versa.

Let's discuss the above steps in detail:

1. Moving queued orders into ShipStation 

• Orders in Chargebee that meet the sync prerequisites are moved into ShipStation. The fields from Chargebee that are synced and their mapped fields in ShipStation are listed here.
• Once moved, the order statuses for those orders change to Awaiting Shipment in Chargebee.
• The Reference Id and Fulfillment status fields for the orders are immediately updated in Chargebee from ShipStation.
• This table lists additional events that happen when an order is moved into ShipStation.

2. Syncing changes for previously moved orders 

Case 1: Changes in Chargebee

If previously synced orders have been updated in Chargebee since the last sync, any change affecting the following fields are synced to ShipStation. (Changes in other fields are not synced):

• Order status
• Order amount
• Amount paid 

Some specific cases that are handled while syncing changes from Chargebee to ShipStation are tabulated here.

Note:
Once orders are cancelled or shipped in ShipStation, they're locked from being further updated via their API, so any updates from Chargebee for such orders do not get reflected in ShipStation.

Case 2: Changes in ShipStation

If previously synced orders have been updated in ShipStation since the last sync, any change affecting the following fields are synced back to Chargebee. (Changes in other fields are not synced):

• Order status
• Fulfillment status
• Tracking Id
• Shipment carrier
• Batch Id

Note:
If the Tracking Id, Shipment carrier or Batch Id are manually updated in ShipStation, they are not synced back to Chargebee.

Some specific cases that are handled while syncing changes from ShipStation to Chargebee are tabulated here.

Sync Prerequisites for New Orders 

Orders with status queued in Chargebee must meet certain conditions before they can be synced into ShipStation. Whenever the sync runs, all the orders that meet all of the following conditions are moved into ShipStation:

• If the sync start date is set, then only those orders with order date on or after it are considered. Otherwise, all orders are considered.
• The orders must have order status as queued.
• The sync date of the orders should be on or before the present date.
• The billing address and shipping address must be present for the order. This prerequisite can be relaxed to an extent in the sync rules.
• ShipStation only supports the following currencies: GBP, USD, AUD and CAD. The integration has no way of knowing what the ShipStation native currency has been set to and so does not do any currency conversion during syncing. If you wish to have the numbers right in ShipStation, you must ensure that the currencies on both sides match. If you have multiple currencies in Chargebee, the amounts are converted to the base currency before moving to ShipStation.

Note:
If you wish to prevent an order from being synced (say, because payment has been removed for it), change its status to on hold in Chargebee.

Configuration and Initial Sync 

Let's look at how the sync rules are configured and how the sync runs for the first time.

PART A: Connecting ShipStation and Setting Sync Rules 

1. Connect your ShipStation Account

• Navigate to Settings > Configure Chargebee > Third-party Integrations > Collaboration > ShipStation.
• Enter your ShipStation API Key and API Secret to authorize the integration. You can find those by navigating to Settings > Account > API Settings in ShipStation.

2. Data Validation

This step performs a check to see if the prerequisites for syncing are met. If any orders fail the check, a summary is shown and you can download a CSV file with details. This file can be used to inspect the errors better, especially for a large list.

3. Configure Sync Rules

Sync rules are settings that control the sync behavior between Chargebee and ShipStation.

You can configure the following:

• The number of days before their shipping date that orders must be moved to ShipStation. This is called the sync date for the order.

  Example:
  If you set the number of days to 3, then when the sync runs on say, Jan 15th, eligible orders with shipping date on or before Jan 18th are moved into ShipStation.

• In ShipStation, both the billing address and the shipping address fields are mandatory (sub-fields that are mandatory are name (either first name or last name), line 1, city, zip and country). If either one of the billing or shipping addresses is absent for the order, you can choose to have the address copied from the available field.

• Map custom fields between Chargebee and ShipStation: all the Customer and Subscription level custom fields from Chargebee are available for mapping to ShipStation fields.

  Mapping Inventory SKU
  Optionally, you can have an Inventory SKU field for every item in your Chargebee Product Catalog which you want to map to ShipStation. To map these fields, create a custom field at the plan, addon, and charge price point level with the API name as cf_inv_sku. This field gets automatically mapped to the SKU field at the line item level in ShipStation.

4. Choose Sync Start Date
Any orders with order date preceding this date are not synced. This is useful in case you created some test orders in Chargebee which you do not want to sync. This date cannot be changed once set.

PART B: Running Initial Sync and Syncing all Orders for the First Time 

Once the configuration has been done as above, the following steps are performed to sync the very first set of orders into ShipStation.

1. Run Initial Sync

• An initial sync is run for the first 10 orders in Chargebee.
• Sync results follow, that show which orders were synced and which encountered errors (the errors are shown). At this point it is advisable to check ShipStation to see if the synced orders have been imported properly.
• When errors are encountered, you may either:
  • Fix errors and retry the initial sync.
  • Leave the erroneous orders un-synced and start syncing the remaining orders (next step).

2. Sync All Orders

1. Post the initial sync of the first 10 orders, the remaining orders can now be synced.
2. All errors are listed and can be downloaded in a CSV file.
3. There is an option to ignore the errors after choosing which, the affected orders are not considered for syncing again unless some change is made to them.
4. This process leads you to the Sync Overview page (next section) which is your ShipStation integration dashboard from where you can see a summary of the last sync etc.

Sync Preferences 

Once on the final page of the integration after you have completed the initial setup and sync, you can modify your settings:

1. Sync Now
   Run an immediate sync of orders between Chargebee and ShipStation.
2. Auto Sync
   Auto sync, which runs the sync process every 30 minutes, can be toggled on or off. It is turned off by default.
3. Manage sync rules
   This leads you to the sync rules page to make changes to your settings.
4. Unlink integration
   Unlinks your ShipStation account from Chargebee so that no more order syncing happens between Chargebee and ShipStation.
5. Last sync time and number of orders synced (on last sync) are displayed too.
6. Sync errors
   Orders with sync errors are listed under this tab. Note that on the user interface, only up to 200 errors would be shown. You can click on download CSV to get a CSV file with all the errors. Click on Ignore all to ignore the errors and skip the erroneous orders from the next sync until they're updated.

Additional Sync Scenarios 

Apart from the cases discussed thus far on this page, there are some unique scenarios during syncing that need to be looked at more closely. We describe them below:

Splitting and Merging Orders
ShipStation allows orders to be split or merged. When an order is split, its line items become individual orders themselves. When several orders are merged, all their line items are combined to form a single order.

Chargebee to ShipStation 

This section discusses unique cases for syncing data from Chargebee to ShipStation.

Regular Orders:
This subsection is for those orders that are not split or merged in ShipStation:

Split and Merged Orders:

This subsection is for scenarios that involve changes in Chargebee for orders that have been split or merged in ShipStation: