Fast, accurate shipping is the final link between a manufacturer’s production floor and its customers. Whether you’re delivering finished goods to distributors or direct-to-consumer orders, every shipment depends on precise data, secure communication, and reliable tracking. To achieve that, many IBM i developers turn to expensive shipping software or dysfunctional UPS online shipping integrations that automate label creation, rate lookup, and delivery visibility.
That’s where Kato Integrations’ UPS Developer Toolkit for IBM i makes a real difference.
Manufacturers and distributors ship thousands of packages every day. Each shipment requires carrier communication, rate calculation, label generation, and tracking updates. Managing all that manually or with legacy systems is slow, error-prone, and difficult to scale.
By connecting your IBM order management system, like Frontier ERP, directly with Kato Integrations’
UPS Developer Kit API, you can automate every step of the process:
Generate shipping labels directly from IBM i.
Access real-time tracking data without leaving your system.
Calculate shipping rates and delivery times instantly.
Validate addresses before creating a shipment.
Real-time connectivity with UPS services ensures operations flow smoothly, reduces manual entry errors, and guarantees customers receive accurate delivery updates.
The UPS Developer Kit is a suite of APIs provided by UPS that allows developers to connect business systems with UPS shipping and logistics functions. When paired with IBM i environments, it creates a seamless bridge between your ERP system and UPS online shipping services.
The API enables team members to:
Create shipments and generate labels automatically.
Estimate time in transit and delivery based on live UPS data.
Retrieve tracking updates for in-progress shipments.
Validate addresses to ensure deliverability before shipping.
When built into your ERP workflow, these capabilities mean employees can handle the entire shipping process without leaving the IBM i interface.
Shipping integrations deal with sensitive business and customer data, so security isn’t optional. The Kato UPS Developer Kit ensures every transaction is protected with TLS encryption, meeting the latest PCI compliance standards for data exchange.
This means your system can communicate securely with UPS servers without exposing information to outside risks. No matter if you’re generating a label, pulling a tracking update, or validating an address, the Kato UPS Toolkit has you covered.
Kato’s prebuilt toolkit gives IBM i developers the power of UPS APIs without the complexity of building connections from scratch.
UPS Online Shipping Integration
Connect directly to UPS web services to create shipments, generate labels, and confirm delivery status in real time.
Real-Time Tracking
Retrieve up-to-the-minute shipment status from UPS, keeping your operations and customers informed.
Address Validation Integration
Works hand-in-hand with Kato’s Address Validation Toolkit to ensure every shipment begins with accurate delivery data.
Time-in-Transit and Delivery Estimates
Access precise UPS data for route planning, scheduling, and customer delivery expectations.
Secure, Compliant Communication
All UPS data is exchanged using industry-standard encryption, maintaining compliance and 100% data security.
Label Printing from IBM i
Generate and print ZPL-compatible UPS shipping labels directly from your IBM i to supported printers; no external tools needed.
Building a secure API connection to UPS web services can take weeks of development and testing. Kato’s prebuilt UPS Developer Toolkit eliminates that work by providing native RPG subprocedures and preconfigured API calls that are ready to deploy.
That means developers can focus on integrating the logic into their ERP workflows instead of spending time on network communication, authentication, or XML parsing. The result is faster development, more reliable integrations, and reduced maintenance overhead.
Address validation, rate calculation, and real-time tracking all work together to ensure your shipments are accurate, on time, and fully visible across the supply chain.
Part 1 – Address Validation is the first of Kato’s IBM i toolkits that helps connect legacy systems and reduce development time for manufacturers. Would you like to learn more? Contact us today!
Coming up in Part 3: We’ll explore how Kato’s CyberSource Toolkit can provide you with faster and more secure credit card processing for IBM i applications.