How to develop a custom shipping module for a new

Question

I'm interested in developing a custom plugin for a new carrier. I see Netsuite offers UPS, FedEx, USPS, Endecia, etc. I found this page on Netsuite (http://www.netsuite.com/portal/developers/dev-resources.shtml) but it's not very clear how a developer like me can go about developing this. Does Netsuite even let outside developers create their own shipping modules? I'm interested in developing my own tax module as well one day.

Answer 1

One possible solution (Assuming the shipping provider has the HTTP(s) based API eg- REST), some of the steps might be optional depending on what you want:

1) Create a shipping item with a flat rate pricing

2) Write a user event of Sales Order that on update/create, contacts contacts the HTTP based API and gets the rates and updates the shipping price on Sales Order.

3) If you are looking for things like shipping label integration, you may want to write a User event on Item Fulfillment that contacts the API and gets the tracking number and update the same on the fulfuillment record and communicates to the shipping provider about package details.

4) Write a scheduled script additionally to update the Item fulfilment status

Pros:

1) Real time rates

2) Shipping Label Integration

Cons:

1) Package details of your shipping cannot be bundled.

2) User experience for setting standard shipping (such as carrier details) can be different than this one.

Alternatively or a better approach is to contact NetSuite customer support and then provide a bundle which can overcome limitations mentioned above, which I believe is the approach of Australia Post.

Answer 2

Or use pacejet.com which handles everything from LTL, negotiated pricing and has a bundle in the repo.