UPS not only delivers your packages with quality, but also offers an API to streamline any shipping needs for your company or application. With their API integrated into your software, you can validate addresses, check shipping costs, compare delivery services and rates, print labels, track packages, and more in a single package.

In this article, we will be covering two highly useful actions: address validation and tracking. We will demonstrate how you can integrate these actions into your current FileMaker system.

Getting Started

To start, you will need to set up a UPS account. After setting up your account, you will need to create an application on the new account. The new application will contain the client ID and client secret. The client ID and client secret are what the API uses to authenticate your access and allow entry to their software. Your client secret is essentially an extra password and should be treated as such. You should keep this secret and store it in a secure location.

Setting Up A New Application

When creating a UPS application, you’ll need to provide some personal information for authentication. The app will require you to link your API credentials to your new UPS Account. After this, the application details and the attached products will need to be completed to your specifications. Subscription API products are free to use and include tracking and address validation. For pricing information on the Premium API feature, visit the UPS API catalog.

Address Validation

With address validation, you can compare city/state/zip codes to ensure the information provided is valid. If the address combination is not valid, a list of possible cities/states/zips will be returned. This functionality is limited to addresses in the 50 United States and Puerto Rico. To find more detailed information, read the Address Validation documentation.

Below is an example of our request. The only required information is the country code and zip code, along with your login credentials and access key, which are passed in the request headers.

Here is an example of a successful response to this request:

Tracking

The tracking functionality allows customers to monitor their shipments and view detailed status information. By using tracking, you can view your package’s journey from start to finish and see every location it has been to, along with the time of arrival. To use this feature, you will first need a reference/order number. UPS provides some order numbers for testing, and we will use them in this demonstration. You can learn more about the Track API on the UPS website.

Below is an example of a successful response from our tracking request. 

Conclusion

Shipping is critical for many companies; if your business handles a high volume of shipments, it can be a hassle. Save time and frustration by integrating your FileMaker system with UPS to easily manage all your shipping needs in a single, consolidated package. If you have any questions or wish to discuss integrating UPS with your FileMaker system, please contact DB Services.