Shippo

Shippo is an app. Install it from Apps, then open it with Open app: it opens inside your admin, signed in to your store as you. The app is free; Shippo bills its own labels. It speaks English, Spanish and French, following your browser’s language.

Connect

1. In Shippo, open Settings › Advanced › API and generate a token. A test token starts with shippo_test_ and makes free test labels; a live token starts with shippo_live_ and buys real ones (Shippo asks you to request it).
2. Paste it into API token and press Test connection. When Shippo accepts it, it is saved. The token is kept encrypted and never shown again; leave the field empty to keep it.

The card says which mode you are in. Test mode: labels are free and not real. A test label never fulfills an order and is not tracked, so no customer is sent a tracking number that leads nowhere. Live mode: each label is real and Shippo charges for it; refund a mistaken one in Shippo.

Ship from and the parcel

• Ship from: the address on every label: a name, the street, city, postal code, the country as two letters (like US) and, in the United States, Canada and Australia, the state or province. No label is made until it is complete.
• Parcel: the weight and size on every label, in pounds, ounces, kilograms or grams, and inches or centimetres. Numbers take a point or a comma, like 1.5. It starts in your store’s units (Settings › General): 1 lb and 10 × 8 × 4 in when imperial, 0.5 kg and 25 × 20 × 10 cm when metric. An order whose products have weights sends its own weight instead.
• Service level: leave it empty and the app buys the cheapest rate Shippo offers for the parcel, compared in your order’s currency. To always use one service, enter its Shippo token, like usps_ground_advantage; when Shippo does not offer it for an order, nothing is bought and the reason says so.

Labels

• On, and Make the label automatically on a new order: each new order, test orders aside, gets its label, from the carriers in your Shippo account. An order not paid yet, such as a bank transfer or an online payment the customer has not finished, waits and gets its label on its own once it is paid; one cancelled before that never does. An order a company buys on payment terms (pay in 30 days and the like) is unpaid by agreement and does not wait: it is sent at once.

Not sent through the app yet, with the reason shown: orders paid on delivery, orders to a courier office, locker or service point, and parcels to another country than the one you ship from (they need a customs declaration). Make their labels in Shippo.

Auto-fulfill

Auto-fulfill is on unless you turn it off. When a label is made, the order is marked fulfilled at once with the carrier and its tracking number, and the customer is emailed both, with the carrier’s tracking page. If Shippo is still making the label, the order is fulfilled when it is ready.

The app then follows the parcel until it is delivered and tells your store where it is: on its way, out for delivery, waiting for pickup, delivery attempted, delivered, or failed (see Orders). This is checked every ten minutes; Update tracking checks now. A label you refund in Shippo before the carrier has the parcel stops being followed.

Turn Auto-fulfill off to fulfill orders yourself: the app still makes each label and shows where the parcel is on its own page, but leaves the order unfulfilled. Labels made while it was off stay yours to fulfill when you turn it back on.

The labels

Labels lists each order with its carrier, service, tracking number (a link to the carrier’s tracking page), its latest status in Shippo’s words (or Test label) and whether the app fulfilled it. Label opens the label as a PDF, ready to print.

Make a label by hand

Make a label by hand takes an order number, like #1001. Use it to try again after fixing what went wrong, or for an order you want to send before it is paid. For an order not paid yet, such as a Pay later order you made, the page says so and sends nothing until you tick Also when the order is not paid yet and press again.

An order never gets two labels from the app: it records the order’s label before buying it, so a second click or a repeated order finds it and buys nothing. If Shippo’s answer is lost on the way, the app asks Shippo within ten minutes which label was bought, and tells you to make it again if none was. In Shippo, each label carries the order’s reference (storeloom- and the order’s id), so you can find it there.

Orders ticked in Storeloom

In your Orders list, tick up to 50 orders and choose Make labels: the app opens with them at the top, under Orders ticked in Storeloom. Each shows its label if it has one, else why it could not be made, else No label yet. Make labels for … orders makes the missing ones one order after another, by the same rules as by hand, so an order never gets a second label; the page then says how many were made, how many already had one and how many were not, with the reasons under What went wrong. An order that a fulfilment service ships (such as your warehouse) gets none. A press stops starting new orders after about 40 seconds, so the page never waits too long: press the button again to go on with the rest. A second press while one is running is turned away.

Print selected labels: tick labels in the list, or choose Print these labels under the ticked orders, to print them as one PDF, in the order you chose (up to 50). If one label cannot be fetched, nothing is printed and the page names that order, so a PDF never looks complete with a label missing.

What went wrong

What went wrong says why an order could not be sent, such as a missing state, an incomplete address to ship from, payment on delivery, a service level Shippo did not offer, or Shippo’s own answer when it refused the label.

Remove the app

Remove in Apps stops it at once: new orders are yours to ship again. Two days later the app deletes everything it kept for your store.

What the app keeps

The app keeps your store’s address and access, the Shippo API token (encrypted), the address you ship from and the settings you enter, and for each label: the order number, Shippo’s rate and label numbers, the carrier and its service, the tracking number and link, its latest status, and what went wrong. It keeps no customer names, addresses or phone numbers: it reads them from your store when it makes a label and sends them to Shippo. The App Shop links to the app’s privacy page, which says the same.