UPS My Choice for Business: Getting Control Over Incoming Deliveries

If you run a business that receives regular UPS deliveries — whether that is inventory replenishment, supplier shipments, or customer returns — you have probably experienced the frustration of packages showing up at unexpected times, sitting on a loading dock when nobody is there to receive them, or simply not knowing what is arriving on any given day. UPS My Choice for Business is a delivery management program that solves these problems by giving you advance visibility and control over every UPS package headed to your address.

The service comes in two tiers. The free version provides basic email alerts when packages are on their way and a delivery calendar showing expected arrivals. The premium tier, at $40 per year, adds SMS notifications, tighter delivery windows, unlimited delivery change requests, multi-location management, and API access. For most businesses receiving more than a handful of UPS deliveries per week, the premium tier pays for itself almost immediately.

What You Actually Get

The core value of My Choice for Business is simple: you know what is coming before it arrives. As soon as a package enters the UPS network destined for your address, you get a notification — even for shipments you did not initiate yourself. This covers packages from suppliers, returns from customers, and anything else coming via UPS. No more surprise deliveries at 7 AM when the receiving dock is not staffed, and no more wondering whether that expected inventory shipment is arriving today or tomorrow.

The delivery window estimate narrows down when to expect the driver. The free tier provides a 4-hour estimated window; the premium tier tightens that to 2 hours. For businesses that need to schedule receiving staff, clear dock space, or have equipment ready to unload heavy shipments, a 2-hour window makes operational planning much more practical than hoping the driver shows up sometime between 8 AM and 5 PM.

Delivery change requests are where the premium tier really earns its $40. If your office is closed for a holiday, you can reschedule a delivery for the next business day. If you have moved to a new location and a supplier is still shipping to the old address, you can redirect packages in transit. If a high-value shipment is arriving when nobody will be at the office, you can reroute it to a UPS Access Point for secure pickup. The free tier limits you to five delivery changes per year, which is useful but restrictive. Premium provides unlimited changes.

Driver Release and Package Security

One of the perennial headaches of receiving business deliveries is managing driver release — the decision about whether the driver leaves a package at the door or waits for a signature. If you require signatures on everything, missed deliveries pile up quickly on days when the receptionist steps away. If you allow release on everything, packages sit exposed.

My Choice for Business lets you set granular release preferences. You can authorize release to specific locations — a reception desk, a back dock, a designated area inside a locked vestibule — and provide access instructions to the driver. You can set different rules based on package value, requiring signatures above a certain threshold while allowing release on routine shipments. Premium members can also get delivery proof photos, which provides documentation that a package was placed in the designated area.

For businesses that have experienced package theft or damage from packages left in unsecured locations, these controls are genuinely valuable. Setting up detailed release instructions once means every future delivery follows your protocol automatically, without you having to call UPS or leave notes on the door.

Managing Multiple Locations

Businesses operating from more than one address — a warehouse and an office, multiple retail locations, or branch offices — can manage all locations from a single My Choice for Business dashboard under the premium tier. Each location can have its own delivery preferences, alert recipients, and release instructions, while a central administrator has visibility across all of them.

This is particularly useful for operations where different people manage receiving at each location. The warehouse manager in New Jersey and the office manager in Atlanta can each receive alerts only for their location, while the operations director sees the full delivery calendar across both. The alternative — logging into separate UPS accounts for each address — is clunky and makes consolidated planning impossible.

Integrating with Your Operations

For businesses with more sophisticated operations, My Choice for Business offers email and API integrations that connect delivery data to your existing workflows.

On the simpler end, forwarding delivery alerts to a shared email inbox or a Slack channel means your receiving team always knows what is arriving without anyone having to check the UPS website. You can set up email rules that flag high-value shipments or shipments from specific senders for priority handling.

The API integration, available to premium members, allows programmatic access to delivery data. Your warehouse management system or inventory software can pull incoming shipment information, match it against purchase orders, and update expected arrival dates automatically. For businesses processing dozens of inbound shipments daily, this integration eliminates manual data entry and reduces the gap between when a shipment arrives and when inventory is updated in the system.

Webhook notifications provide real-time event triggers — package shipped, out for delivery, delivered — that can kick off downstream processes in your business systems. When a delivery confirmation fires, your receiving workflow can automatically generate a put-away task, update stock counts, or notify the team member who ordered the item.

Is Premium Worth It?

The premium tier costs $40 per year, which works out to about $3.33 per month. The average cost of a missed business delivery — factoring in the redelivery attempt, employee time spent tracking the package, and potential delays to projects or operations waiting on that shipment — is typically $15-25. Preventing even two missed deliveries per year more than covers the annual fee.

The unlimited delivery change requests alone justify premium for most businesses. If your office closes for a week over the holidays and you have a dozen UPS deliveries expected during that period, being able to reschedule all of them without restriction is worth far more than $40. The tighter 2-hour delivery window saves receiving staff from sitting idle waiting for the driver during a vague 4-hour block. And for multi-location businesses, the consolidated management view is essentially a free operations tool.

The free tier is a reasonable starting point if you receive only occasional UPS deliveries and primarily want to know when something is arriving. But once you cross roughly 10 inbound UPS shipments per week, the operational efficiency gains from premium features pay for the subscription many times over.

Getting Set Up

Enrollment takes about 15 minutes. Log into your existing UPS account or create a business account if you do not have one. Navigate to the My Choice for Business section and select your tier. UPS will verify your business address — typically by mailing a verification code — and once confirmed, alerts start flowing automatically for every UPS package headed your way.

Configure your alert preferences to match your workflow. Set up email notifications for your receiving team. Establish driver release instructions that reflect your actual receiving setup. If you have premium, add your additional locations and set per-location preferences.

The most underutilized feature is the delivery calendar. Spending two minutes each morning reviewing expected deliveries for the day — what is arriving, approximately when, and from whom — allows your team to plan receiving staffing, clear dock space, and prioritize other tasks around the delivery schedule rather than reacting to the driver's knock.