Multi-carrier shipping software: every carrier account on one screen

Can I use more than one UPS or FedEx account?

Yes. Connect as many UPS and FedEx accounts as you have, and every rate shows which account it comes from. Sellers end up with several accounts for ordinary reasons. A carrier offers better rates two years in, but only on a new account number under the same login. Or a retailer you drop-ship for wants its orders on its own account.

Rilk compares all of them together, each as its own line with the account name on it. A 2-day order can show FedEx 2Day on your main account, FedEx 2Day on the promo account, FedEx 2Day One Rate, UPS 2nd Day Air on your own account, and, on a Walmart order, Walmart's own 2-day label. Each line has its price and delivery estimate, so you see which account is cheapest on this order, not on average.

Ship a retailer's drop-ship orders on the retailer's account

When a retailer pays the shipping, it gives you its UPS or FedEx account number. Sometimes the label must be billed third party; sometimes it does not. In Rilk you enter the retailer's account number once, per marketplace. You do not need the retailer's login: for UPS it takes the account number and postal code; for FedEx, the account number. You also pick which of your own accounts makes the label. That matters because the retailer has usually approved one specific account of yours to ship on its account. From then on every order from that retailer is billed to the retailer automatically, while your eBay and Amazon orders keep shipping on your own rates.

We ran this on desktop shipping software for years. Using a second account for third-party billing meant saving a profile, closing the program, re-importing the profile and running another copy with different credentials. In Rilk it is a setting in the browser.

Use your own negotiated carrier rates

Connect your own UPS, FedEx, USPS and DHL Express accounts and your negotiated rates are the rates you see. Rilk adds nothing to them. FedEx accounts register inside Rilk: enter the account and confirm the PIN. FedEx One Rate is supported.

Get the cheapest label that still arrives on time

Rilk waits until every connected carrier has answered, so a slow carrier can never push you onto the second-cheapest rate. It drops every rate that would land after the marketplace's delivery date, then buys the cheapest of what is left. When two rates cost the same, it takes the one that arrives sooner. If no rate can arrive on time, it stops and flags the order. It never quietly falls back to a late service, because a late delivery costs more than the label saved. The label cost lands on the order and in your profit the moment you buy it.

Amazon Buy Shipping: every Amazon order, every time

On Amazon, buying the label through Amazon Buy Shipping is about protection more than price. In Amazon's words, "With Amazon Buy Shipping, we refund costs for claims when customers report that packages don't arrive", and that protection depends on buying the label through Buy Shipping. In our experience it works like signature confirmation on every label, and signature alone is sometimes not enough to win a claim. Price is not the trade-off either, because Amazon lets you link your own UPS or FedEx account to Buy Shipping and keep your negotiated rates.

Turn on "Buy Shipping only" in Rilk and every Amazon order ships on Amazon Buy Shipping. The automatic pick, bulk shipping and the rate screen offer nothing else. Leave it off and the Buy Shipping rate sits next to your own carrier rates, and you choose.

Walmart Buy Shipping next to your own rates

Walmart works differently, so Rilk treats it differently. Whether Walmart's label is the cheaper one depends on your shipping template. On 2- and 3-day services Walmart subsidises its sellers' labels, and UPS's express services and FedEx 2Day One Rate on Walmart's label often come in well under your own rates. On a next-day template there is no subsidised Walmart rate, and you ship on your own account. A Walmart-only rule would leave those orders with nothing to buy. So Rilk shows Walmart's rates and yours together, and you buy whichever is cheapest. If you do set Walmart only, orders with no Walmart rate fall back to your own carriers.

It used to be worse. When UPS was missing from Walmart's API, sellers who wanted that saving bought the label on the Walmart portal. Then they went back to their shipping tool to mark the order shipped by hand. Walmart has since opened that up, and in Rilk both labels come straight through the API on the order. Tracking goes back to Walmart by itself.

Label reference fields set per marketplace

Every retailer wants something different in the reference fields on the label. One wants its PO number, another wants the SKU and quantity, and a third wants your own order number. Get it wrong and the retailer cannot match the box to its order. In Rilk you decide what goes in each reference field, per marketplace, with a default for everything else. You set it once, and every label for that channel follows it.

A retailer template can read Ref 1 = the channel PO (PO1234) and Ref 2 = quantity and SKU per line (1X SKU-A, 2X SKU-B). Rilk fits that into each carrier's own limits: 2 reference lines of 35 characters on UPS, 3 lines of 40 on FedEx, 1 on DHL eCommerce. Where a retailer mandates its own references, Rilk fills them for you: Zoro's FedEx PO, customer reference and invoice number go on every Zoro label, and Home Depot's UPS references go on its labels by default, with no setting needed.

One screen for every order

Orders land in Rilk the moment they are placed, with the shipping step on the order. Ship one order in a few clicks, or bulk-ship up to 500 orders in one batch. Each label prints to your label printer, the tracking number goes back to the marketplace, and the cost lands on the order.

What's included