Before we began designing ChannelShipper, we always had Smart Pack in mind. We had spoken to companies who used other despatch management systems, and a common complaint was the need to manually apply packaging and shipping services to orders. Some companies had a dedicated staff member whose main role was to manually process orders, whereas some companies delegated the role to whoever crewed the packing stations. The consensus was always that the process took too long, and was too prone to mistakes.

What we wanted was to build was a feature that would let us automatically add a shipping service and a package format to every order, even those with multiple products. This means all you need to do is produce your shipping label.

In order for Smart Pack to work, there’s some information you have to give us first.
1. Tell us your package formats.

Your package formats should be meaningful to every member of your operation. Where a category like ‘Large Letter’ may be useful to some, you can’t realistically expect an individual with four different packaging materials in front of them to know which of the four would most closely fit. have you ever been in a situation where you’ve ordered something online, only for it to arrive in a box twice the size? if you teach us the names, weights, and sizes of your packaging materials, Smart Pack aims to reduce waste and confusion by selecting the most appropriate format for each order.

2. Tell us about your products.

It’s good practise to keep an up to date product catalogue in ChannelShipper, especially if you sell overseas. If the right customs information is in place, we will send this electronically every time.
For Smart Pack, the key pieces of information we need are the most suitable package format for that product, how many we can fit inside, and the product’s weight. With this information, we will never recommend a package that the products wouldn’t be able to fit into, and we won’t go over any weight limits for certain package formats that couriers could impose.

3. Tell us how you want your orders shipped

The shipping rules feature has been around in all of the software we produce, and for good reason. There are lots of services, many of which seem very similar but carry different costs and offer different enhancements. As managers and business owners, it’s important you take control over financial decisions like which services to use. Shipping rules let you tell us which services you want us to apply to which orders, so your team’s time isn’t spent asking you which ones to use.

Smart Pack is available as standard for all ChannelShipper accounts.

If you want more information on how to configure this feature, click to read our guide.

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