Simplify Your Shipping Workflow With Batch Processing

There’s always room for improvement and increased efficiency. We developed a workout plan to help you #shipinshape. Today we discuss how to make your shipping process more simple and effective with batches.

Ask yourself (or your shipping manager) this: are we picking, packing and creating one shipping label at a time for every single order? Maybe so, or maybe you’re already creating your labels in batches to save time. That’s a great start, but have you ever considered fulfilling your orders in large groups from beginning to end? Picking, packing and creating labels in a multi-order batch workflow can save you a ton of time. We’ve outlined our suggested steps below:

CREATE AN OPEN BATCH

Processing your orders in batches are a super effective way to create a bunch of labels and packing slips all at once. It’s also a great way to manage your orders from the beginning of your shipping process.

First, create an open batch with a manageable group of orders to print out a pick list and start compiling product.

PRINT YOUR PICK LIST

Pick lists are amazingly effective as a precursor to printing out packing slips or creating your shipping labels. It can often be an overlooked step in your shipping process. By instinct you may want to print out your shipping labels first, but what if you can’t find your product or discover it’s damaged or defective? Then you have to void out the shipping label and worry about the inaccurate data sent to your selling channel and/or customer.

It’ll save you a lot of time and headaches if you first print out a pick list for all of your open orders in your batch and go pick all the product to have ready to pack. You can then determine from there which orders you may not be able to fulfill at that moment and discard them from your batch.

CREATE LABELS AND PACKING SLIPS

Once you’ve picked your product, create your labels and packing slips for the entire batch. Ideally, the labels and packing slips would print in-line. Group each corresponding label and packing slip for each order and lay them out in your packing area.

PACK YOUR ORDERS

With your packing slips and labels dispersed, place the appropriate product and shipping box along with the order documents. Once you’ve divided up all your picked product, you can package up your orders; placing the packing slip inside the box and shipping label on the outside, one by one. Ideally, a team member could help assemble the boxes ahead of you placing the product inside and closing up the box.

GET YOUR ORDERS OUT THE DOOR

Now all of your packages are ready to ship. You can create an End of Day SCAN form and request a pickup for USPS shipments.

WAYS TO SPEED UP YOUR WORKFLOW

You can see how using batches for picking, packing, processing and creating labels can save you time and fatigue from running back and forth around the warehouse. Below are some other suggested methods that can save you time in ShipStation when processing your orders.

BARCODE SCANNING

There are some huge advantages with implementing barcode scanners in your workflow. Barcode scanners are super quick and can do some pretty advanced functions depending on what software you use. Using barcodes is ideal if you want a quick and clean shipping and inventory system for your warehouse. Plus it’s super efficient, accurate and reduces a ton of manual clicks.

KEY COMMANDS

Keyboard shortcuts can be really helpful in your shipping software to perform everyday tasks, such as applying a shipping service and package type, weight, insurance and other shipping settings. Plus, in shipping software like ShipStation, you can print packing slips and pick lists, navigate the pages in the interface, pull in orders, read weights from a scale, create labels, batches and more. I combination of barcode scanning and key commands could cut your current workflow time in half by saving several manual clicks per order.

QUICKSHIP

Quickship, a special feature in ShipStation, allows you to click once to create a label and avoid any additional confirmation screens. So this means that either with the click of a mouse, a single barcode scan or a keyboard command you can get your label printed out in seconds. When you pair all of these features with automations and presets, you can make your daily workflow as simple as logging in, picking your product and with a single click have all of your labels and packing slips printed and ready to go.

We’re talking about all this and more ways to ship in shape in our free webinar tomorrow. Register here to become as efficient as ever.