3 New USPS Integration Feature Upgrades To Help You Ship

by EasyPost

New USPS functionality is here! We’ve released a series of enhancements to our existing USPS integration. Some of the new features will be available upon request while others will apply to all EasyPost users. If you’re interested in a feature, reach out to your Customer Success Manager or our Support team to get started. Below you’ll find a summary of the changes we’ve made in time for peak season.

Summary of features:

1. USPS Country Price Groups for international shipments will be returned in the API response. This feature is available by request.
2. Indicators for Cubic Soft Pack, Cubic Rectangular, Dimensional Weight (Dim Wt), or Oversized will display during rating. This feature is available by request.
3. The correct customs form will be automatically selected for your shipments when required. This feature will apply to all users.

USPS Country Price Groups for international shipments will be returned in the API response

International shippers rejoice! We’ve updated our USPS integration to include the Country Price Group for your USPS shipments. Not sure what a Country Price Group is? USPS assigns each country they ship to a Price Group, numbered 1 through 20, for every mail class they have available. The Price Group determines the shipping rates for international shipments to a country. Adding the Price Group to your USPS responses will make it easy for you to keep track of your shipping expenses for various countries.

We’re adding a new attribute intl_price_group to define the Country Price Group. You can see all of USPS’s Price Groups on their websiteopen_in_new.

We’re also including a new attribute usps_domestic_zone to designate the Domestic Zoneopen_in_new of shipments.

Because the same shipment may have a different Country Price Group or Domestic Zone based on the mail classes, these new attributes have been added to the Rate Object to help maintain consistency.

Indicators for Cubic Soft Pack, Cubic Rectangular, Dimensional Weight (Dim Wt), or Oversized will display during rating

USPS uses several price types to rate shipments. Today, the EasyPost API takes your USPS shipment’s dimensions into consideration to choose the best price type your package qualifies for, so you always get the best rate*. However, in the past we have not included any indicators in the API response to show which price type was chosen. This can cause confusion for our customers who may be expecting a different rate.

With our update, you’ll see a new element in both the rate and buy API responses that will show you exactly which price type will be used: Cubic Soft Pack, Cubic Rectangular, Dimensional Weight (Dim Wt), or Oversized. The table below shows what the response will look like.

^{*Cubic Soft Pack will only be chosen if the shipper selects it using Predefined Package Type. Other price types can be automatically chosen by EasyPost.}

The correct customs forms will be automatically selected for your shipments

Customs forms can be daunting. There are countless specific rules and different forms that you need to keep track of to ensure the correct documentation is provided when sending a package internationally, through military mail, and to, from, or within a US Possession, Territory, or Freely Associated State (PTFAS). It’s a lot.

To simplify this process, we’re taking the guesswork out and upgrading our customs forms logic to provide you with the exact forms you’ll need for your shipments. For all USPS shipments that need a customs form, our system will automatically print the correct integrated customs form shipping label based on the selected mail class, origin, destination, weight, and declared value. If you want to learn more about USPS rules, visit their website for both domesticopen_in_new and internationalopen_in_new rules.