Print FedEx Shipping Labels Directly from your WooCommerce Store
The process of generating and printing the FedEx shipping label is quite a tough job for many WooCommerce business owners. Many store owners go to the FedEx website and log in to their accounts using their credentials in order to print the labels. They have to manually go through each order and copy-paste or export the order information and then put them on the FedEx shipping label website. This complete process not only sounds tedious, it is time-consuming as well. Thus, to solve this issue and save time, you would require an automated system that generates the shipping labels as soon as you receive an order.
In this article, you will see how the WooCommerce FedEx Shipping plugin can print the shipping labels. You will also get to check out the necessary steps required to print the shipping label. Thus, without any further delay, let’s jump right into it.
What is FedEx shipping label?
A FedEx shipping label provides the key information at every checkpoint of your supply chain to move your package from your warehouse to your customer’s doorstep. FedEx uses a specific template for its shipping labels. They design their labels in a way that the packages are optimized with their own process, at the routing center, and at the storage warehouse. These labels are designed to be read by both machines and humans. Each area of the label is being used along the way to inform specific partners of the supply chain.
In WooCommerce, the entire process of generating the shipping label can be automated using the WooCommerce FedEx Shipping Plugin. It consists of two major steps,
- Generating the FedEx shipping label
- Printing the FedEx shipping label
Let’s check out both the steps.
Generating the FedEx shipping label
Generation of the shipping labels is completely invisible. This means that you don’t have to do anything in order to create the label. Moreover, you won’t be able to see how the labels are generated. As soon as you receive the order on your WooCommerce store, this plugin automatically fetches the data from the order and sends the shipment details to your online FedEx account. From there, the generated shipping label is ready for download. The postage for this label is automatically paid from your FedEx account.
This generated label contains the customer’s shipping address, order’s origin address, and the delivery information. You can see a screenshot of a sample FedEx shipping label on the right. Starting from the top, the destination address, the receiver’s address, the package barcode, on the left is the tracking ID and on the bottom right is the delivery date & time (all are highlighted by red arrows). If you look carefully, along with the delivery date & time, the type of FedEx shipment is also mentioned. As you can see in the sample image, the EXPRESS SAVER is clearly mentioned below the delivery date.
These set of information is very important for the FedEx delivery agents. It helps them to deliver the package to the exact location without much effort and confusion. With the introduction of so many barcodes reading apps, it has become even easier for the customers to check out the basic information regarding the shipment tracking. For example, if you share this shipping label with your customer as soon as the label is generated, they can scan the barcode and find out their shipment status.
Using this plugin, you can even generate the return label as well. Above is one of the samples of a return FedEx shipping label. As you can see in the screenshot sample, the addresses are reversed in the return shipping label.
In addition to the FedEx label generation, you can even change the shipping service manually before the label is generated. You have the option to choose the shipping methods from the list of services according to your wish. For example, if your customer has requested to deliver the package via FedEx First Overnight and you want to deliver via FedEx 2-Day service, you can do that here. Moreover, you can even change the physical dimension of your package or parcel before generating the shipping label.
Printing the FedEx shipping label
The printing of the shipping label will require your manual authorization. Meaning, as soon as you receive a new order on your WooCommerce store and if you are ready to accept the order, you would have to allow the plugin to generate the package’s shipping label. You can do that by clicking on the Create Shipment button as shown in the image below.
By doing this the page is refreshed and some new options appear. At this stage, the shipping label is generated and is ready to be downloaded.
You can even download the label according to the choice of the Image type. You can choose the appropriate image format based on your choice and this option is present in the FedEx’s settings under the Shipping option of the WooCommerce settings. Following are the image format options that you can choose from,
The plugin also supports printing label in different sizes according to your specific requirements. Below are the available options:
As we mentioned in the label generation section earlier, this plugin also allows you to print the return shipping label. You can click on the Generate return label button in order to do that.
Using this plugin for your WooCommerce FedEx orders, you can even set a default service for printing the label. This plugin integrates with FedEx Label APIs to print domestic or international shipping labels with a tracking barcode.
Steps to activate the label printing option
There are two ways to enter the WooCommerce FedEx plugin settings. One of the methods is,
- Go to the WooCommerce option on the Dashboard and then click on it
- Click on the Settings options under the WooCommerce option
- On the new page, click on the Shipping tab — this will open another tab under the Shipping page
- You can now see the FedEx option below the main tabs- click on it
Another way is by going to the Dashboard and then click on the Plugins option. Further, you can click on the Installed plugins to open the list of the plugins installed on your WordPress website. After doing this, scroll down and find the FedEx plugin and choose the settings option under it.
Now that you’re in the FedEx settings, you can now scroll down to come to the Label Generation section. You can refer to the image given below.
Here, you can see that there are few options including Generate Packages Automatically After Order Received and the Generate Shipping Labels Automatically After Order Received as well. These options are self-explanatory and you can click on the Enable tick button to activate the required options. By activating these options, you will activate the shipping label generation and printing feature.
Now, if you need or want to give the label access to your customers, then you can refer to the following image.
These options are also under the Label Generation section of the FedEx settings page. Thus, if you want to send the generated shipping label to your customer via email, this option will let you do that. Just check the ‘Send label in email to customer after label generation‘ box and enable this function. Moreover, you can even allow users to download their shipping labels by checking the other option.
Benefits of automatically printing the FedEx shipping label
Regardless of the type of online business, the wasted time you can never get back. One way to increase the productivity in your WooCommerce business is by automatically creating the shipping labels right from your computer. So, following are the benefits of printing the shipping labels for delivery services like FedEx:
- It is very easy — This benefit should be obvious as you don’t have to manually fetch the address and paste it on the FedEx website.
- It costs less — The shipping and postage rates offered by FedEx are fairly cheaper than other popular shipping services. Moreover, by printing the labels by yourself helps minimize costs for your business.
- It saves quite a lot of time — Well, yes it does. By printing the shipping label, you can save even more time when you want to generate the return labels for some of your orders.
In conclusion…
So far we have covered the how-s and why-s of using the WooCommerce FedEx shipping plugin. We hope that you can now configure the label printing by yourself and work with it. It would be better to try this feature by yourself. You can create your own orders and experiment with the features and explore its possibilities. You can refer to these articles as well,
