Happy Birthday, Shipping Solutions!

Facebook was born in 2004, Twitter in 2006, and Instagram in 2010. But they are babies compared to Shipping Solutions, which was publically launched on July 1, 1996. Yes, Shipping Solutions is now 20 years old!

“Were there even computers back then?” you may ask. Barely. Shipping Solutions Version 1.5 was shipped out on four 3.5 inch floppy disks. Our founder, David Noah, paid his then 5-year-old son a dollar to switch out the disks as the program was copied from the computer.

The inspiration for Shipping Solutions came when David started a company to ship products from the United States to Japan. Filling out the export paperwork was a hassle, and when he looked for an affordable software program to help him, he couldn’t find one. So, one of his computer savvy warehouse guys wrote a little program in Microsoft Access. When David’s freight forwarder started recommending the program to their other customers, David realized the software might find a market niche, and Shipping Solutions was born!

In 1999, Shipping Solutions took a big step forward when it released Shipping Solutions 2000 and a second version, Shipping Solutions Classic. The program was still written in Microsoft Access but it had more features including the ability to file your shipment with the Automated Export System (AES). Paper versions of the Shipper’s Export Declarations (SEDs) were still allowed at that time, but Shipping Solutions was one of the first computer programs to be approved for AES filings. A brochure from 1999 is shown below.

Shipping Solutions Professional was launched in 2003. This was the first version that included an Export Compliance Module to help customers not just with their paperwork but with complying with U.S. export laws by providing a way to screen the parties in a shipment against all the U.S. government’s restricted parties lists.

And in 2012, Shipping Solutions took a big leap forward with Shipping Solutions Professional 9 and Classic 8. These versions finally left Microsoft Access behind for a more robust Microsoft SQL Server database.

Shipping Solutions customers run the gamut from multi-national companies to microbusinesses, although most of our customers are small and medium-sized companies (who, by the way, represent 97% of U.S. exporters). Many of our customers have been using Shipping Solutions since the early days, and we appreciate the relationships we have developed. Providing the highest possible level of customer service is one of our core values, and we hope you agree that it shows.

Although it might not be as much fun as a program that lets you post pictures or rant for 140 characters, Shipping Solutions continues to be an affordable way for our customers to complete their export paperwork, file through AESDirect, and stay compliant with U.S. export laws. In the future, we hope to add a more robust dangerous goods module, add an ODBC connection to the Data Exchange Manager, and add additional forms like Master Bills of Lading.

We hope you will be with us for the next 20 years of our journey!