Move a clean ship-to list, not ten years of duplicates
Ship-To Clean takes your customer and ship-to export, merges duplicates, standardises every address to postal format, and verifies US addresses through a provider licensed to use USPS data. You get one clean import file, a list of rows that need a human decision, and a map of which old IDs merged into which new one.
Updated
- Duplicates found across spelling, abbreviations and suite formats ("Ste 200", "Suite #200", "#200"), grouped by customer, with the surviving record and the merged IDs listed.
- US addresses verified through Smarty, a USPS-licensed provider, under a subscription in your company's name; we never run your list through the free USPS API, whose terms limit it to shipping and mailing use.
- Business-specific checks: dock or receiving-hours notes moved out of address lines, attention names separated, and rows marked when the verified address is residential.
USPS's API terms and conditions (updated 22 January 2026) say its website, APIs and data may only be used to facilitate USPS shipping or mailing transactions, that other uses need a separate USPS licence, and that they may not be used to create a list of names or addresses.
Source: developers.usps.comSmarty's subscription agreement (revised 9 September 2026) bars making its services or output available to third parties, including through bureau services, without Smarty's written authorisation, and limits use to the subscriber's internal business purposes; contractors and service providers acting on the subscriber's behalf may use its account as Authorized Users, with the subscriber responsible for all activity.
Source: smarty.comMelissa sells address verification credits pay-as-you-go from $40 for 10,000 credits, and counts each US address as 3 credits; a free allowance of up to 1,000 credits a month needs a one-time $4.97 verification fee (checked 7 November 2026).
Source: melissa.comA migration copies every bad address into the new system
A B2B customer file grows for years. The same receiving dock is entered three times by three sales reps. A ship-to has the buyer's name in the street line and "call before delivery" in the suite field. A customer moved and the old address was never closed. Nobody notices because the warehouse team knows which one is right.
A migration to a new ERP, WMS or 3PL removes that knowledge. The import maps fields mechanically, the 3PL's system validates addresses at label time, and the bad rows surface as failed orders, address correction charges and calls to customers in the first weeks after go-live, when the team is busiest.
Cleaning the list is also a licensing question. USPS's free APIs may only be used to facilitate USPS shipping or mailing transactions and may not be used to create address lists, and commercial address engines restrict running other companies' lists through your subscription. A clean that ignores this can put your data provider relationship at risk.
Without it
- Cleaning it in Excel: Free. Sorting and find-and-replace catch exact duplicates and obvious typos, but not "Suite 4" versus "#4", and cannot…
- Melissa self-serve: Verification credits from $40 for 10,000, 3 credits per US address, with batch lookups you run yourself. Good value if…
- Smarty directly: A 42-day free trial of 1,000 lookups and Professional plans from $552 a year, with batch lookups. It verifies…
With Ship-To Clean
- Duplicates found across spelling, abbreviations and suite formats ("Ste 200", "Suite #200", "#200"), grouped by customer, with the surviving record and the merged IDs listed.
- US addresses verified through Smarty, a USPS-licensed provider, under a subscription in your company's name; we never run your list through the free USPS API, whose terms limit it to shipping and mailing use.
- Business-specific checks: dock or receiving-hours notes moved out of address lines, attention names separated, and rows marked when the verified address is residential.
- Duplicate detection
- Postal standardisation
How it works
- 1
Scope and fixed quote
Send your customer or ship-to export. Within 2 business days we confirm by email the row count, the plan and a fixed quote for the full file, before you pay.
- 2
Verification account
You open a Smarty account in your company's name and add us as a user acting on your behalf, which Smarty's agreement allows for contractors and service providers; you stay responsible for the account. Smarty's free trial covers 1,000 lookups; larger files use a Smarty plan billed to you by Smarty.
- 3
Clean and verify
We standardise and deduplicate first, so only unique addresses use lookups, then verify each US address and flag the ones that could not be confirmed. Delivered within 5 business days for files up to 50,000 rows.
- 4
Review and import
You get the import file in your new system's template, the review list, and the merge map from old to new IDs. A 30-minute call covers the rows that need your decision.
Features
Duplicate detection
Matches on normalised street, suite, city and ZIP plus company name, so "Acme Inc, 12 N Main St Ste 4" and "ACME, 12 North Main Street #4" become one record, with every merged ID kept.
Postal standardisation
Street suffixes, directionals and unit designators put into USPS format, cities and states corrected, ZIP+4 added where the address verifies.
Licensed US verification
Each unique US address checked through Smarty, which holds a USPS data licence, for deliverability, missing or wrong suite numbers and residential versus commercial.
Field clean-up
Attention names, phone numbers, dock hours and delivery notes moved out of address lines into their own columns, so carrier labels print clean.
Review list, not guesses
Addresses that cannot be verified or matched confidently are listed for you to decide, never silently changed.
Import-ready output
Delivered in the column layout of your new ERP, WMS or 3PL template, with the merge map so open orders and history can be relinked.
Non-US rows
Canadian and other international addresses are standardised and deduplicated and listed separately; verification for them is quoted on request.
A look inside
What you get: the working view and the delivery report.
Illustration of the layout, built from this page's own feature list. It shows no real results.
Who it's for
Distributors changing ERP
Moving from an older ERP or accounting system to NetSuite, Acumatica, Business Central or similar, with thousands of customer ship-tos built up over years.
Brands moving to a new 3PL
Sending a wholesale customer list to a new warehouse, where every bad address becomes a failed label or a correction fee.
Operations teams merging accounts
After an acquisition or a CRM merge, with two copies of many customers and no single master list.
Works with
- CSV and Excel exports
- NetSuite, Acumatica and Business Central import templates
- QuickBooks and Xero customer exports
- Salesforce and HubSpot company exports
- Shopify B2B and WooCommerce customer exports
- 3PL and WMS customer import templates
- Smarty US address verification (your account)
Pricing
One-time price per file, paid after we send a fixed quote by email. US verification lookups run on a Smarty subscription in your company's name and are billed by Smarty, not by us: its free trial covers 1,000 lookups, and its Professional plan starts at $552 a year (checked 7 November 2026). This keeps the work inside the provider's terms. For comparison, Melissa sells verification credits from $40 for 10,000, at 3 credits per US address, for you to run yourself. Founding customer pricing applies to early-access orders. Over 50,000 rows: quote on request.
Orders are subject to the Ship-To Clean terms.
Small file
$39 one-time
Up to 1,000 ship-to rows
- Duplicates merged with merge map
- Postal standardisation
- US verification within Smarty's free trial
- Field clean-up for attention and notes
- Review list of uncertain rows
- CSV or Excel output
Standard
$190 one-time
Up to 10,000 ship-to rows
- Everything in Small file
- Output in your ERP, WMS or 3PL import template
- Residential versus commercial flag
- Non-US rows standardised and listed
- 30-minute review call
- One re-run after your decisions
Large
$490 one-time
Up to 50,000 ship-to rows
- Everything in Standard
- Two source files merged into one master list
- Customer-level grouping across ship-tos
- Two re-runs after your decisions
- Delivery within 5 business days
Compared with the alternatives
- Cleaning it in Excel
- Free. Sorting and find-and-replace catch exact duplicates and obvious typos, but not "Suite 4" versus "#4", and cannot confirm an address exists.
- Melissa self-serve
- Verification credits from $40 for 10,000, 3 credits per US address, with batch lookups you run yourself. Good value if someone on your team will prepare the file, run it and resolve the results.
- Smarty directly
- A 42-day free trial of 1,000 lookups and Professional plans from $552 a year, with batch lookups. It verifies addresses; deduplication, field clean-up and the import template are up to you.
- Your ERP implementation partner
- Can include data cleansing in the migration project, usually billed by the hour. Worth asking; many projects leave address quality to the customer.
What changed
- USPS's API terms and conditions (updated 22 January 2026) say its website, APIs and data may only be used to facilitate USPS shipping or mailing transactions, that other uses need a separate USPS licence, and that they may not be used to create a list of names or addresses. Source: developers.usps.com
- Smarty's subscription agreement (revised 9 September 2026) bars making its services or output available to third parties, including through bureau services, without Smarty's written authorisation, and limits use to the subscriber's internal business purposes; contractors and service providers acting on the subscriber's behalf may use its account as Authorized Users, with the subscriber responsible for all activity. Source: smarty.com
- Melissa sells address verification credits pay-as-you-go from $40 for 10,000 credits, and counts each US address as 3 credits; a free allowance of up to 1,000 credits a month needs a one-time $4.97 verification fee (checked 7 November 2026). Source: melissa.com
- Smarty offers US address verification with a 42-day free trial of 1,000 lookups and a Professional plan from $552 a year (checked 7 November 2026). Source: smarty.com
From export to clean import file
The fixed quote comes back within 2 business days; the full file within 5 business days of the go-ahead.
- Day 1: You send the customer or ship-to export and your new system's import template.
- Day 2: Scope and fixed quote by email.
- Day 3: You open the Smarty account in your company's name and add us as a user acting on your behalf.
- Day 4–7: Clean, verify and build the import file, review list and merge map.
- Day 8: Review call and re-run with your decisions.
Security and data
- Files are encrypted in transit and at rest and used only for your clean.
- Verification runs in your own Smarty account, so lookups and their logs sit under your subscription.
- We never add your addresses to any mailing list or address database.
- Only the people working on your file can open it, and access is logged.
- Your files are deleted 30 days after delivery, or sooner on request.
Guides and answers
Cleaning ship-to addresses before an ERP or 3PL migration
Step-by-step: deduplicate, standardise and verify a B2B ship-to list before moving to a new ERP, WMS or 3PL, without breaking data licensing terms.
Read the guide →The USPS address API and bulk list cleaning
What the USPS address API terms allow, why bulk cleaning a customer database is outside them, and the licensed alternatives with their published prices.
Read the guide →Questions
Why can't you just use the USPS API?
USPS's API terms say its APIs and data may only be used to facilitate USPS shipping or mailing transactions and may not be used to create address lists. Cleaning a customer master file is not a shipping transaction, so we use a licensed commercial provider instead.
Why do I need my own Smarty account?
Smarty's agreement does not let a subscriber make its service or results available to other companies, including as a bureau, without Smarty's written authorisation, so we cannot run your list through a subscription of ours. It does let contractors and service providers acting on a subscriber's behalf use the subscriber's account for the subscriber's own internal business purposes, with the subscriber responsible for their use. If Smarty asks for outside help to be named on your order form, we sort that out with you before any lookups run.
What about Loqate or Melissa?
Loqate runs a reseller program for partners, and Melissa sells credits you can use yourself. If you already hold a licence with one of them, we can work in your account instead of Smarty; tell us which in the request.
Will you change addresses automatically?
Only formatting and verified corrections, such as a ZIP+4 or a standard suffix. A change that alters where goods go, or any merge we are not certain of, goes on the review list for your decision.
Do you keep my customer list?
No. It is used only for your clean and deleted 30 days after delivery, or sooner if you ask. We never add your addresses to any database of our own.
Can you do this every month?
This is a one-time clean before a migration. For checking new orders as they come in, see Address Catch, our order address checker.
Go live with addresses your new system can ship to
A fixed quote before you pay, from $39 per file, verified with licensed data.
Request service