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Packing slips and shipping fulfillment runs
Learn how to communicate with your shipper and set up packing slips for physical products so you can guarantee they’ll be shipped on time, every time.
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Course Instructor
Jason Howell
In this lesson you'll learn:
  • Steps for setting up a shipping and fulfillment system in Ontraport
  • Which settings to configure for your shipping and fulfillment
  • How to create shipping and packing slips automatically
  • How to view and manage your shipping process in Ontraport
  • What a finalized packing slip looks like
  • How to download a list of packing slips for future reference
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Transcript
Now that you’ve successfully charged your customers for shipping, I’ll cover how to carry out the next steps in this process – notifying the shipper and setting up the packing slips to be automatically sent with the shipments.

By building and automating this process, you’ll be guaranteeing that your customers’ products will be shipped on time, every time.

I’ll briefly explain how to set up this system. 

First, you’ll configure the shipping and fulfillment settings.

Second, you’ll add your product to a shipping and packing slip on your product settings. This is what tells Ontraport to create a packing slip and add your order to a fulfillment run. 

And third, you’ll view your shipping info and/or manage your own shipping process. You can confirm that the slips have been sent to your fulfillment center in your Shipped Packages collection. Or if you run your own shipping, you can download fulfillment runs yourself. You can print your shipping labels from your shipping fulfillment spreadsheet and even create tasks to send shipping notifications.

You’ll find all these settings in the same place: Sales and then Settings. I’ll go through each of them so you’re clear about this process and can ensure it runs smoothly. 
 
Here’s a standard packing slip so you know what I’m talking about before we dive deeper: 

You’ll see the billing and shipping information for the customer who purchased the product, the order date and time, the order number, and the list of items purchased, including quantities. You can see a space for comments and the shipper’s information with a standard “for help, please contact…”

This is the file generated for every physical product purchased that requires shipment.

You’ll use Shipping Settings and Packing Slips in Ontraport to send the shipping details of each customer to whomever needs it. These automatically generate spreadsheets for you or your fulfillment team to print shipping labels and packing slips for each order. This info is sent at a time interval that you specify.

To get started configuring your shipping and fulfillment settings, navigate to the “Sales” dropdown. Click “Settings.” Then find and click “Shipping Settings and Packing Slips.”

You’ll see a few different options. These are the fields where the shipper’s name, email, and phone number are stored – the contact information of the person doing your shipping. Again, this could be you, a team member, or a third-party shipper.

Your business information will also appear at the top of all of your packing slips. You don’t set up that information here; it’s pulled from your Business Information section. Check out the Admin and Account Settings video from our Getting started course if you don’t know what that is. 

Here you can see options for how often you would like packing slips to be emailed to your shipper. Choose from: hourly, daily, weekly, or monthly. 

Keep in mind that your recipient in this case is whoever is going to actually ship your product – not your customer.

So, how often will your shipments go out? Once a week? Once a month? Every day? Consider what makes the most sense for your specific business and shipper, including the time of day. 

For example, if your shipper ships out every Monday, you can set this to weekly, Sunday at 5:00 PM or something like that.

Next are your notification settings for whoever is on the receiving end of this shipping list. If you run your own shipments, you’ll insert your own email address. If you’re sending this information to a third party, plug in their email address right here. Just click the Add button to send your shipping info to as many people as you like. When you’re done click “Save” in the upper right corner.

Once that’s done, your Ontraport account will automatically monitor all purchases that include a shipping method and attach it to the next shipping fulfillment run based on your set schedule. 

For example, say new orders come in from Tina Smith at 9:05 AM and Sharde Williams at 9:30 AM. If you’ve set your Shipping Settings for every hour, both of these orders will be emailed to your fulfillment center at 10 AM. Or if you’ve set them to Sunday at 5 like I showed you a minute ago, these orders will hang out until they’re sent on the weekend. 

This email notification is similar to a fulfillment list (which we cover in another video), but it only includes information related to the shipping of the product. So, it includes the packing slip, which is a PDF of the order details for Tina and Sharde’s products being shipped, as well as a spreadsheet for creating the shipping labels, since they were both added to the fulfillment run during the previous one hour interval. Your fulfillment spreadsheet makes it easy for you or a third party to print out shipping labels for your orders.

Once a fulfillment run is sent, that contact and packing slip will not show up on subsequent sends. This is a one-and-done type deal.

Step two is to add your product to a shipping and packing slip.

This is a super easy step. Once your shipping and fulfillment is all set up, you can make your product shippable on your order form. Navigate to your product settings on your order form, hover over your product, and click here to turn shipping on. 

And step three is to view your shipping info and/or manage your own shipping process.

Let’s check out your shipping fulfillment runs first. To get there, go to Sales, then Settings, and then Shipping Fulfillment Runs. 
 
In this collection, you’ll see an archive of the batches of packing slips processed. You can see the date and time of your fulfillment run and the number of orders in it. Download all the packing slips included in your fulfillment run from this screen by checking the box next to them and clicking Download. 

With a complete history of all shipping runs sent, if anyone’s shipment gets screwed up, you know where to point fingers — I mean, who you can hold accountable.  

If you run your own shipping and don’t want to get an email every time a new run is ready, you can skip the notification. Just download the latest run on your schedule!

You can also download all packing slips for any specific contact, or a .CSV file of their physical product orders.

Just go to Sales, then Settings, and click Shipped Packages.

This information is sorted by contact instead of by fulfillment run, so if you ever need to help contacts out with their orders, this is a great place to go. Check the box next to the contact you’re interested in, and you can click to download PDF or .CSV.

You can also see if your package has been sent to fulfillment using the “Status” column in this collection.

Last, if you manage your own shipping from a warehouse or garage, you can easily create your shipping labels using your spreadsheet. Excel and Google sheets both have default formatting options for mailing labels.

You can always get fancy and add in tasks for your team to send shipping confirmation emails with tracking links. This is a great way to ensure that you notify your customers as soon as their package ships. Check out the “Tasks” videos in the Ontraport for Sales Teams series for more info.

You’re set up to monitor sales that require shipping. In this course, you learned how to offer your shipping options to customers and charge them accordingly. And you know how to automate generating a list of pending shipments and packing slips and deliver them to whoever does your shipping. 

All that’s left is to get out there and sell some widgets!
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