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Automatic printing of Packing Slips for new orders

Because this original request I made for this was closed when an unrelated feature was introduced, I'm creating a new one.

I would very much like to be able to have the automation in ShipStation be able to print. This would allow me to have it automatically print all new orders that have downloaded, so that warehouse personnel know an order has come in when the printer starts spitting out packing slips. This is something we're used to having in a different product we switched from to ShipStation and it's the main thing we miss. With printing being done through ShipStation Connect now, this should be entirely possible too.

The other thing that would have be added is another feature that ShipStation really does need anyway: an indication of some kind that an order has already been printed. This would allow automation to "print all unprinted orders" as well as greatly reduce the possibility of orders being double-packed when more than 1 person is working shipping. We've had this happen multiple times simply because there's no good way to tell when an order has already been printed right now.

Thank you!!

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Brian Van Bogart SoftBums shared this idea  ·   ·  Admin →
AdminShipStation (Product Owner, ShipStation) responded  · 

Hi @everyone,

So, just to help us better understand, would this idea work best for you if it automatically printed whenever an order came in? So, say, an order comes in on Sunday at 4:00 a.m., it should print then. Or would it be better if whenever you log in to ShipStation and have it active that you would prefer to have the packing slips printed out then?

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  • Ray Sims AskDrDJ.com commented  · 

    This would be very helpful for our small business as well. It would allow us to grab a sheet from the printer. Pick and pack then use the scan to print barcode to print the label. As far as when it prints, we wouldn't be super picky. If it's an automation rule that would be best. Then we could configure it to work any way we wanted.

  • StickerTalk, LLC. commented  · 

    Any updates? This would be a time saver for us. Currently we have set up Tags to keep track of what has been printed and what hasn't. But while that works for us, it is still time consuming to do. This would speed that process up for us and save some time. You haven't responded in almost two years to this request. As of this posting it has 301 votes. Can you give us an update?

    Jeff

  • StickerTalk, LLC. commented  · 

    An automation rule would be great, because then I could determine which orders get printed and when. If I also had the ability to also choose the printer through the automation rule that would be even better. Then I could print international orders to one printer and domestic to another.

    For example, (If "International order" print to Canon 1.) (If "Domestic order" print to Canon 2) and run these rules for all orders when they are imported.

    If I can't have any of that, just print them to my default packing list printer when they come in. It would save lots of time.

    Jeff
    StickerTalk.com

  • Kevin Latimer Celebrate Vitamins commented  · 

    Just add auto print, it really does not matter if it runs over the weekend. Would be one less thing to do in the morning.

  • grips4less commented  · 

    We would appreciate an automation feature that marks a packing slip as "PRINTED" so we don't re-print and potentially ship out duplicate orders. We currently use Bright Pearl to print our packing lists because they have this feature. However, we would much prefer to use Shipstation so we can integrate other automation features around shipping. Inability to prevent duplicate packing notes is one of the biggest drawbacks of Shipstation.

  • StickerTalk, LLC. commented  · 

    This is a great idea! I really like the automation rule idea. We would use this. That way when we show up at work in the morning, our orders from overnight would already be sitting on the printer and every time a new order was imported, it would be printed. I'm out of votes or I would give this idea 3.

    Jeff

  • Arnav Kejriwal MET International Online commented  · 

    We would also love to see this customizable for any document (aka, we would like to auto-print the order summary for each order as it comes in).

  • Arnav Kejriwal MET International Online commented  · 

    @Kenneth Brown "In Automation rules add print label, print packing slip. Boom"

    Exactly! This is what we need. ShipRush offers this.

  • benp commented  · 

    I think it would be a cool idea if ShipStation had an automation rule that automatically printed off the set packing slip template for every order that pulls into shipstation after you hit the refresh button.
    This would make it so we didn't have to use the packing slip from our inventory software to search for our orders on shipstation, and would intern save us time.
    We plan on using the ShipStation packing slip in label for (4x6) to easily place the packing slip on the outside of the package and use the new Scan to Print feature introduced by ShipStation.
    What do you guys think of this idea?

  • Static commented  · 

    I have been searching for a way to auto-print new orders. Day or night, as they come in. Printers are always online. Many of our products could also have their shipping labels printed automatically using existing automation rules. Just give me a "print packing slip" and "print shipping label" action. We have all our printers connected through shipstation connect already, this should be cake!

  • Andrew Tate PopGeek commented  · 

    I was under the impression this was already possible when I signed up for ShipStation. Is it not?

    All order should live print labels and packing slips as they come in, that's what automation is.

  • Josh Sibley Dance's Sporting Goods commented  · 

    We currently run our online store with live inventory from our retail store and though we do set buffer quantities to try to avoid selling the same product in-store and online, we've run into a few cases where items have sold out in-store before the Internet Sales team was able to pick the online orders. We would like to be able to solve this problem by having packing slips automatically print on import from our BigCommerce store. We would like to buy a wireless printer and set it behind one of our registers where an employee is constantly at, so at all times of day when an order is placed and imported to ShipStation, the Packing Slip prints and our employee can then grab the item and set it aside. We can't be the only store that has this problem and no one seems to have a solution on any app nor does BigCommerce have any suggested solution. This would be AMAZING for ShipStation to implement.

  • JudyLedger commented  · 

    We have a need to be able to print a shipping label and TWO invoices for each order. We currently have the shipping label and the invoice on one piece of paper but we need the shipping label and two invoices (without having to go back into orders and print them individually or bulk).

  • Brian King Superlative Events commented  · 

    Print it automatically when it happens real time.

    Is there a way to do this with Zapier or some other WYSIWYG integration platform?

  • AdminShipStation (Product Owner, ShipStation) commented  · 

    Hey everyone, thanks for adding your votes and comments here! If you haven't already, please let us know how you're shipping today and the issues you're running into. Any information will absolutely help us look into this.

  • Randy Bardwell Native Threads commented  · 

    Whenever a new order comes in would be best for our operation as it would serve as an auditory and visual update of the workload in that timeframe. Auto printing labels would be a great option too although I'm not ready to utilize that option myself. Thanks SS!

  • Thomas Lander Crazy4Tank commented  · 

    Been trying to figure out how to get this done for weeks, never in a million years did I think this would not be an option

  • Jerry Marks Revival Parts commented  · 

    Our business case depends on which issue exactly you're referring to, but I'll try an explain our work flow to try and clear things up a little bit

    Basically, customers place orders, they come in, and are printer automatically overnight,

    Our warehouse guys come in, grab a stack off of the printer, and get to work picking and shipping the packages, which saves time as they don't need to print pick lists on a case by case basis

    Ship station currently has no feature to print a specific form, or customize a packing slip when it comes in, so i was unable to accomplish this with ship station.

    The other thing is, even once we made a custom solution to generate slips for these packages when they come in, we found out that we don't even have access to an API to print items via Shipstation Connect
    I know shipstation has an INTERNAL API for Shipstation Connect, but it's not exposed, so we can't even use the same software that we're paying to use that's already installed on all of our computers for printing to automatically queue a print job

    Which means, we've changed our process from being all inside shipstation, to something that relies on 2 other separate processes, which are on two different systems, to something that could probably be implemented quite easily on you guy's end, or even if you weren't willing to make the entire process, if you could just expose the internal shipstation connect API we could reduce the reliance on other programs and servers and it would make our stuff so much easier, of course there are alternatives like google cloud print, but why would we have two separate systems to print things remotely when you guys already have all the framework and functionality built out, but simply have chosen to not expose it?

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