How to print Royal Mail labels for Shopify orders
Royal Mail labels for Shopify orders are printed through Royal Mail Click & Drop, Royal Mail's online postage service. The order has to be in Click & Drop first, with its address, items and weight, and printing the label is what gives the parcel its tracking number. This is how it works with AK: Royal Mail Click and Drop, from the order arriving in Shopify to the tracking number back on it.
1. Get the orders into Click & Drop
Each paid Shopify order goes to your Click & Drop account as it comes in, with its items, each item's weight and the service your rules choose. An order that can't go yet (a UK postcode that isn't shaped like one, say) waits in the app with the reason beside it, so nothing disappears. Connecting the two takes an API key from Click & Drop: how to connect Shopify to Royal Mail Click & Drop has every step.
2. A standard Click & Drop account: buy and print in Click & Drop
With a standard account you buy the postage and print the label in Click & Drop itself, for one order or a batch at once. In the app each order shows In Click & Drop until its label is printed.
3. An Online Business Account: print from the app as well
With a Royal Mail Online Business Account, labels can also come straight from the app:
- On Orders, tick the orders and press Print labels: one PDF holds every label.
- On the page of an order that's in Click & Drop, Print label gives its label.
- Manifest today's labels, on Orders, sends the day's despatch manifest to Royal Mail.
- Make a return label, on an order's page, once your return address and returns service are set in Settings.
Labels from the API, return labels and manifests are for Online Business Accounts in Royal Mail's own API. On a standard account those buttons don't appear, and you print in Click & Drop as in step 2.
4. Tracking back to Shopify
When the label is printed, its tracking number comes back to the Shopify order: the order is marked fulfilled with the number, and Shopify emails your customer the shipping confirmation. Settings, Tracking back to Shopify, decides when and whether:
- Mark the order fulfilled: When its label is printed in Click & Drop (the default), or When it's despatched (manifested) in Click & Drop.
- Email the customer Shopify's shipping confirmation with the tracking number: on unless you turn it off.
Printed but the Shopify order still unfulfilled? Click & Drop not updating Shopify orders with tracking goes through what to check.
5. Try it first with sample mode
Sample mode is a practice Click & Drop inside the app. It prints each label two minutes after the order arrives, so you can watch orders go from paid to labelled before connecting your own account. The app is on the Shopify App Store.
This app isn't made by Royal Mail. A label that didn't print? Write to me at support@aislekit.app with the order number.