Having your warehouse staff manually select the appropriate shipping method for each order is inefficient. Instead, you can have ShipHero automatically map how you want each order to ship. You have three options you can map to:
- A particular shipping method, such as UPS Ground
- The cheapest available option
- The cheapest available option will get to them within a certain number of business days
This article will go through the different steps to map to each of the methods listed above.
Mapping to Cheapest
Mapping to a Specific Method
Further Resources
Mapping to Cheapest
Any unmapped orders are assigned a generic shipping label. This requires the packer to choose a shipping method during the packing process.
It is a much more efficient process, and much less prone to errors for you to map all of your orders to shipping methods beforehand.
- Make sure that the carriers that you want to use are added on the Shipping > Carriers page.
- Now we can map your shipping methods using the Shipping > Methods page.
- Per the below image, there is an unmapped shipping method named "Free." Click on the Shipping Method name to edit it.
- The shipping method was edited in the example above to map it to the cheapest / Ever. All new orders with the method "Free" will now have a shipping method of cheapest / Ever, and in the app, the packer won’t have to choose a shipping method.
- It will automatically ship via the cheapest method available.
NOTE: When you change a shipping method, it will only affect orders going forward. It does not retroactively update older orders or current orders.
Mapping to a Specific Method
- You can also map to a specific shipping method.
- For example, you want to map to UPS Ground and set a shipping cut-off time.
The configuration in the image above sets a shipping cut-off at 1:00 PM. Orders that come in before that time have a required ship date of Same Day.
NOTE: You can map different cut-offs for different methods based on your specific business needs and SLAs.
Example of Mapping Shipping Methods with Cut-Off Time
- You can set it so orders with UPS Next Day Air ship the same day if received by 4:00 PM, and orders with free shipping ship the same day if received before 12pm.
- Orders are sorted by the required ship date, so you see the most urgent orders first, and you can always ship orders that are not required to ship today earlier if you want.
- The dashboard also shows you all the orders that need to ship today based on the required ship date.
NOTE: In ShipHero, shipping cutoff date is also the required ship date. You can set the shipping cutoff date via mapping shipping methods or automation rules. If you need to manually edit the shipping cutoff date, you can do so on the order details page or in bulk on the manage orders using bulk edit.
Wildcard Matching
When editing a shipping method, you can use wildcard matching. This checkbox is disabled by default. It is meant to be used when you have many shipping methods with the same word, and you want to map them all as the same method.
For example, if you had shipping methods of:
- Free Shipping – New York
- Free Shipping – New Jersey
- Free Shipping – California
You would make one rule for “Free Shipping – ” and select the Use wildcard matching checkbox to avoid having to map one method for each state.