Shipping buys labels on your own carrier accounts, at your own rates, books freight with your carriers by the pallet or the full truckload, and follows imports coming in from the supplier to your dock. An order is sent (its stock leaves, the customer is told) when the carrier first scans its parcel or picks up its freight, or when you say it went.
Setting up
- Open Shipping and choose Settings.
- Under Carrier Accounts, choose Connect a Carrier Account: UPS, FedEx, USPS, or DHL Express for parcels abroad. You need the credentials of an app you make for the account on the carrier's developer site. They are tried with the carrier, kept encrypted and never shown again. Connecting takes the business settings switch.
- Under Parcels, add the boxes and mailers you pack in, with what each weighs empty, and choose your usual box.
- Say where parcels go out from: a place ships from its location's address; a warehouse with no location of its own needs its address here.
- Choose how labels print: a page for any printer, or ZPL for a thermal printer.
- Choose how rates are shown (Soonest first or Cheapest first) and whether to Choose a rate for me: the cheapest, the soonest, or the cheapest arriving within so many days.
- For parcels abroad, choose who pays duties and taxes by default. Paying them yourself (DDP) spares the customer a bill at the door.
Sending an order
- Open To Ship. Orders from the online store, wholesale, the marketplace, orders taken by hand and the businesses you ship for wait here.
- Open one. Check where it goes out from, the box and the weight.
- Choose Rates on your accounts and pick one, or let your rule pick it. Buy the label.
- Print it and pack the parcel.
Until the carrier scans it, a label can be voided and nothing has moved. Pick list makes the list of where to find what the waiting orders need, in the order the bins are walked.
The end of the day and pickups
Under End of Day, Close the day hands over every label waiting on that account, so their orders are sent now, and marks each parcel manifested on that day's close. The app makes a manifest for the driver to sign; USPS adds its SCAN form (PS Form 5630), which accepts every parcel with one scan, and FedEx Ground its own close-of-day manifest; UPS and DHL Express want neither. Each close is listed with its papers, and opens to the parcels that went out on it. Book the pickup with a carrier for when parcels are ready and when you close.
Shipments and tracking
Shipments is every shipment on one screen, going out and coming in, wherever it came from: orders waiting to go out, labels and freight, orders sent by hand or on another platform, imports, your clients' shipments on their way in and your purchase orders. The strip across the top counts each status (Awaiting, Ready, Label made, Shipped, In transit, Delivered, Needs attention, Coming back, Canceled); tap one to see only those. Pick rows, and the bar over them offers what can be done to them together: make their labels, hand them to the carrier, mark them delivered, print their labels or a pick list, or ask the carriers now. On a phone that bar stays at the bottom of the screen while you pick. Open a row to see it in full, its times where your business is. The app asks the carriers about parcels when the screens open and once a day.
The map
Map shows the same shipments on a map, for the days, the way, the status and the search you choose across the top:
- Each shipment is a pin in its status's color: going out, at the city and ZIP code it goes to; coming in, at the vendor or client it comes from. Pins at one place gather into a circle with how many. Tap a circle to spread it, or, when they all go to one place, to list them.
- Tap a pin to open the shipment, as on Shipments.
- Your vendors are pins of their own, with a green mark when they sell on the marketplace. Tap one (or choose the list beside Vendors) to see what you bought from it, this year and each year, its open orders, what is on its way from it and the stock it holds for you. Open the vendor goes to its full record under Inventory, Vendors.
- Your locations, warehouses and 3PLs are the dark house pins.
- Show routes draws a line from where each shipment on its way left to where it is going; a dashed line is coming in. A parcel on its way stands at its last scan once the carrier's place for it is on the map, with the rest of its way drawn from there.
- Ships are the imports on the water or in the air and the export bookings that have departed, one marker a vessel, each with its ETA and the days left under it. A ship seen by your tracking provider within a day is drawn live, with a ring; the rest are drawn where they are estimated to be along the usual lane between their ports (through Panama, Suez or Gibraltar where the voyage crosses them), as far along as the time since they left says, the part sailed solid and the rest dashed. Tap one for its voyage and what is aboard; the ship icon beside Ships lists them and connects the provider (MarineTraffic, by API key, which looks ships up by the IMO number on the import or booking). The clock asks the provider once an hour; Ask it now asks at once.
Places are found from addresses once and kept. Without a Google key, the US Census finds addresses in the US; a place abroad needs a Google key, under Settings, Connections. A vendor whose pin is in the wrong place can be moved: open it, choose Move its pin, drag it, and Keep it here.
Returns
Returns follows what customers send back, from the request on their order page or from any shipment you sent:
- Open the shipment on the Shipments desk and choose Start a return: what comes back, why, and what the customer wants. A request made on the store shows under Returns as asked for, and starts with one tap.
- On the return, Make the return label on your own carrier account, addressed from the customer to you, and send it to them. The return follows the label: once the carrier scans it, it is on its way back. A customer abroad sends it back by their own post for now.
- When the box comes, It came says how many of each came.
- Inspect it: what came back as new goes back on the shelf through the stock ledger, as the sale coming back; opened, damaged or missing is written off.
- Give the refund on the order, where it was paid, and mark it on the return. Close it when it is done.
Parcels abroad
What customs asks is kept on the product: its HS code (its Schedule B number when it leaves the United States), the country it was made in, and what it is in plain words. A parcel abroad declares each line from these, and you can change any of it before the label is bought. When goods under one code come to more than $2,500, the app asks for the ITN from filing Electronic Export Information in AESDirect; it does not file it for you. The carrier makes the commercial invoice to print beside the label, and the app makes its own, with a packing list, from the shipment's drawer.
Each parcel abroad goes under one of the eleven Incoterms 2020 rules, printed on the commercial invoice: DAP when the customer pays the duties on arrival, DDP when you do, unless you choose another on the parcel. The duties the destination will charge are estimated from the Duty Rates you keep under Settings: a rate for a destination and the HTS codes that start with a prefix, for the days it holds, as your broker tells you. The app looks no tariff up; a line with no rate is counted as unknown, and the estimate says so.
Exports by sea and air
Under Freight, Ocean and Air books a container of your own (FCL), a share of one (LCL) or air freight, for an order waiting to go out or for cargo you name:
- New booking: the consignee and notify party, the cargo lines with their value, HS code, cartons, cubic meters and weight, the forwarder or carrier, the ports or airports, the Incoterm, the sailing and the cutoffs (documents, cargo, VGM).
- What Fits works out from the cargo which of the 20-foot, 40-foot, 40-foot high cube and 45-foot high cube containers it needs, and how full each would be. The Load Calculator under Shipments does the same from a carton's size, for pallets too, on the pallet you build on.
- Add the containers with their seals and verified gross mass as the forwarder gives them, and say when each is gated in.
- Handed over sends the order as a label's scan does; then say when it sailed, arrived and was delivered, or let the carrier's tracking say it.
- Papers makes the commercial invoice (with the duty estimate), the packing list (with the containers and seals) and, by air, the house air waybill in IATA's layout once its facts are entered. The carrier's own bill of lading comes from the carrier.
Brokers, forwarders and bonds
Under Freight, Brokers and Forwarders keeps the customs brokers who file your entries and ISFs and the forwarders who book your freight: who to call, what each does for you, its filer code, SCAC or IATA code, and the papers you keep on it, such as the power of attorney. Name them on imports, bookings and shipments. Under Settings, Bonds keeps your customs bonds, continuous or single transaction, with the surety, the number and when each runs out; you are reminded 60 and 30 days before, then daily in the last week.
Freight
For pallets, book LTL freight (or A full truckload) from an order:
- Under Settings, Freight Carriers, add your LTL carriers with their SCAC and your account. A carrier whose API follows the eBOL standard is booked through it; any other is booked by phone or on its website.
- On the order, choose freight, add the handling units (pallets, their size, weight and class), or Build pallets from the order (below), and book it.
- The bill of lading is made here in the standard layout, with your GS1 Company Prefix if you have one. Enter the PRO number when the carrier gives it.
- For a truckload, add the trailer, the load number and, at pickup, the driver, truck and trailer numbers and the seals.
Pallet Builder
Pallet Builder, under Shipments beside the Load Calculator, works out how cases go on a pallet:
- Choose the pallet: Standard A (48 × 40 in) to start, another common size, a half or quarter pallet for a store's floor, an ISO size, one of your own, or another size typed for once. Each says how high it stands, what it weighs and what it carries.
- Say how it is built: to a height, the pallet included, or so many layers, and the most it may weigh. Left empty, what the pallet carries decides the weight. No case sticks out past the deck unless you allow some overhang.
- Give the case: type its length, width, height and packed weight, take one of your boxes, or take a product's case from its packaging. A case stands upright unless you say it may lie on its side. If you know how many layers high it may be stacked, say so: nothing else can know its strength.
- The plans come best first: Column (one way, corners lined up, the strongest for stacking), Mixed (the deck in blocks, each turning its cases its own way), Pinwheel (four blocks turned around the middle) and Interlocked (every other layer turned or mirrored so the seams cross: steadier, a little weaker for stacking). Each says its cases a layer, its layers and cases, its height and gross weight, how much of the deck it covers, and what decided it, such as "The weight decides: 5 layers". A plan covering less of the deck than you set is shown with a warning.
- Pick one to see each layer drawn from above with its cases numbered (layers A and B when they take turns) and the pallet from the side. Print the build sheet for whoever builds it.
- From a product's case, Use for this product sets its Ti-Hi (its cases a layer and its layers) and its pallet's size and weight under its packaging, and keeps the plan. On a product, Work out the Ti-Hi under its packaging does the same. Only a plan whose layers are alike has a Ti-Hi.
A plan is kept as it was chosen. When the product's case changes after, its packaging says the plan is stale and what changed; work it out again.
When freight is booked from an order, Build pallets from the order builds each product in full layers of its own case and puts what is left of each on top, the heaviest lowest, then fills in the pallets: how many, their size, their built height and weight, and the cases on them. Two built pallets are offered as stackable when both fit under your trailer's inside height and their cases can carry it. Once booked, each pallet has a label with its SSCC ("1 of 3", where it goes, the PO and its cases) and the build sheet draws every pallet's layers; a ship notice to a retailer then names each pallet by its SSCC.
Under Settings, Pallets sets the pallet to start with, the height and weight you build to, the overhang you allow, the least share of the deck to cover, your trailer's inside height, and your own pallets.
Imports coming in
Coming in follows shipments from your suppliers abroad:
- Choose to plan a shipment coming in, from the purchase orders it fills, line by line.
- Add its booking or bill of lading, its forwarder, broker and bond, its cutoffs, its containers and its milestones as they happen. With an ocean carrier connected, its tracking fills them in.
- Prepare the ISF (10+2) for goods by sea: the ten elements the importer gives and the two the carrier files. The app prepares and keeps the filing; your broker or you file it with CBP at least 24 hours before the goods are loaded, and the outcome (filed, accepted, rejected) is kept with the transaction number. A late or missing filing can cost $5,000.
- Record the arrival notice the carrier or forwarder sends as the ship nears: when it is due, when free time ends, and the charges to pay before release. Recording it fills the import's arrival and the containers' last free day.
- The duties are estimated from each item's HTS code and rate, the measures you keep (such as Section 301), and the fees.
- When it arrives, Receive into stock: the goods go in against their purchase orders, at what they cost landed: their price, the duties, and their share of the freight, insurance and fees.
You are emailed once a day about what is coming due: an ISF, a container's last free day at the port, or a customs bond running out. Each import's papers and steps, with who owns each and when it is due, are the import document checklist in the Warehouse section.
Best practices
- Try a new carrier account on The carrier's test system first; labels made there are not real and cost nothing.
- Add every box you use with its empty weight. Carriers charge a light, bulky box by its size.
- Close the day with each carrier before the driver comes, so every order is sent at once.
- Keep HS codes and the country of origin on every product you ship abroad. It is where customs mistakes start.
- Receive imports at their landed cost. A margin worked out from the supplier's price alone is wrong by the freight and the duties.
- Enter your destinations' duty rates as your broker gives them and date them. The estimate on a parcel is only as good as the rates behind it.
- Inspect every return the day it comes. What goes back on the shelf is for sale again; what waits in a box is not.