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A shipment belongs to an order. You create it on the order card, either through a connected courier account, which books the shipment with the carrier and gets you a label, or as an external shipment that you booked somewhere else. Omnilinker then polls the carrier for tracking and shows every shipment on the Shipments list. Before you start, connect a courier account; see Courier accounts. You also need the permissions in Permissions.

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Create a shipment through a courier

1

Open the order

Open Sales > Orders and open the order. Scroll to the Shipments section of the order card.
2

Start the shipment

Click + Create via courier. The Create shipment via courier dialog opens.If the button is greyed out, you have no courier account yet: “Add an enabled courier account first (Courier accounts page).”
3

Choose the account and service

  • Courier account: the account to book with, shown as its name and carrier. The first account is selected.
  • Service: the carrier’s service; see Services.
4

Describe the parcel

  • Weight (kg): 1 by default.
  • Width (cm), Height (cm), Length (cm): optional.
The dialog creates a shipment with one parcel.
5

Add cash on delivery, insurance and a reference, if needed

  • Cash on delivery amount: leave it empty for no cash on delivery.
  • Insurance value: leave it empty for no insurance.
  • Reference: free text, up to 128 characters, shown on the label and in the carrier’s tracking.
Amounts are in PLN.
6

Choose the parcel locker, for InPost locker services

For InPost Parcel Locker (Standard) and InPost Parcel Locker (Max), the dialog adds Parcel locker / pickup point, which is required. Type the locker code, or click Choose a parcel locker to pick it on the map. The dialog shows “Selected point: ” followed by the code.The map button appears only when your organization has saved an InPost Geowidget token; see InPost settings. Omnilinker does not copy the pickup point the buyer chose into this field; take it from the order.
7

Create the shipment

Click Create shipment. Omnilinker books the shipment with the carrier and the dialog waits for the label; see Get the label.
The recipient comes from the order: the delivery address, and the buyer’s e-mail address and phone number. You cannot change them in the dialog. Check the order’s delivery address before you create the shipment.
Creating a shipment is a real booking with the carrier on a Production account, and it may be charged. For Apaczka, every shipment is a real charge.

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Services

The dialog does not show prices. For Apaczka, the dialog has no pickup-point field, so services that deliver to a pickup point cannot get one from Omnilinker.
DPD and Apaczka shipments cannot be created yet: they need a sender address that you cannot enter in Omnilinker yet. See Sender address and pickups.

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Get the label

After you click Create shipment, the dialog shows “Shipment created — waiting for the courier to confirm the label…”, then “Label ready.” with a Download label button. You can close the dialog while it waits: Omnilinker keeps fetching the label in the background. InPost confirms the label a few seconds after the booking. If a label is not ready within about two minutes, Omnilinker tries again up to five more times, with gaps growing from 30 seconds to 10 minutes. Omnilinker always stores the label as a PDF file, named label-<shipment-id>.pdf. For InPost and DPD it also stores a ZPL copy for thermal label printers, when the carrier returns one. For DPD, one label file covers every parcel of the shipment. To get the label later, open the shipment on the Shipments list; see Print labels. You need the Download shipment labels permission. Omnilinker can send a label straight to a printer connected to a station: a Windows PC next to the printer that runs the station app. Setting up stations and printers is covered in Devices and printing. Printing needs the Print permission and a station you can print at. Pick the station you work at with Choose station in the top bar; the print buttons use it. See Choose your station. Without printing, you download the label instead; see Download instead of printing.
1

Open the shipment

On the Shipments list, click the shipment’s row to open its details.
2

Print

Click Print label, or press P. The line under the button says where the label goes, for example “On Zebra at Packing desk 1”.If you have not chosen a station, the line says Choose where to print and the button opens the printer menu.
To print somewhere else, click the arrow next to Print label. The menu lists the printers at your station (Your station · followed by its name), the default printer of each of Other stations, and a download for each stored format, such as Download PDF and Download ZPL. A printer that cannot take the label is greyed out. A message then says what happened:
  • “Printing on … at ….” The label is on its way to that printer.
  • ”… at … has stopped — the label waits there until it’s back.” The printer or its station has stopped, and the label prints when it is back.
  • “No station could take this label. See Print jobs to choose one.” Choose a printer for the job on Devices > Print jobs; see Print a job somewhere else.
Printing a label again prints another copy. While the carrier has not sent the label, the button reads Print when it arrives. Click it and the label prints as soon as the carrier sends it, at the printer you chose or at your station. The shipment then shows “Prints as soon as … sends the label”.

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Labels that print by themselves

A shipment remembers the station its creator had chosen in the top bar. When the carrier sends the label, it prints at that station by itself, unless the station, or its location, is set not to print labels automatically. Automatic printing is on unless someone turns it off. When your station prints automatically, the shipment details show “Labels at … print automatically” with a Change link. A shipment created without a station does not print by itself: print its label by hand. A label that someone asked to print when it arrives prints only there, not twice. See Automatic printing.
1

Select the shipments

On the Shipments list, tick the shipments whose labels you want. The checkbox in the header selects every shipment on the page. Your selection stays when you change the page or the filters.
2

Print

The bar above the list shows how many shipments are selected. Click Print N labels, or use its arrow to choose a printer. Labels the carrier has not sent yet are counted too, and print when they arrive.
The labels print as one batch, in the order you selected the shipments. You can print up to 200 labels at once. Clear selection unticks everything. After you print, a panel follows the batch: how many labels are printed, printing, waiting, on hold and need attention, and which orders are still waiting for the carrier’s label. Cancel the rest cancels the labels that have not printed yet. Hide closes the panel.

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The Label column

The Label column of the Shipments list shows each shipment’s label: The print states need the Download shipment labels permission; without it, every label that is here shows Not printed.

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Download instead of printing

When printing is off for your organization, you do not have the Print permission, or there is no station you can print at, the button is replaced by Download PDF. If the label has a ZPL copy, Download ZPL for a thermal printer appears next to it. Open the PDF and print it from your PDF viewer. With no station at all, the button also offers Skip the download, with Set up a station and Not now.

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Add an external shipment

Use an external shipment for a parcel you booked outside Omnilinker, so the order still shows how it was sent.
1

Open the form

In the order’s Shipments section, click + Add external shipment.
2

Fill it in

  • Carrier: the carrier’s name, as free text. Required, up to 128 characters.
  • Tracking number: optional.
  • Dispatched: the date you sent the parcel. Optional.
3

Save

Click Save. The shipment appears with the manual tag.
Omnilinker does not track external shipments. A new external shipment has the status Label created, or Shipped if you entered a Dispatched date. To change the status later, pick it in the Status column of the order’s Shipments section: Label created, Shipped, Out for delivery, Delivered, Being returned or Canceled. Once a shipment is Delivered, Lost or Canceled, its status cannot change any more. Only the Dispatched date marks an external shipment as dispatched; see What happens to the order. Choosing Shipped in the Status column does not.

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The order’s Shipments section

The Shipments section of the order card lists the order’s shipments, newest first, with Carrier, Tracking number, Status and Dispatched, and a Cancel button. With no shipments, it says “No shipments yet.”. The buttons that change shipments also need the Edit order permission. Without it, the section is read-only.

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The Shipments list

Open Shipments > Shipments to see the shipments of all orders, newest first, 25 per page. Rows with a problem status (Delivery failed, Exception or Lost) are highlighted. To narrow the list:
  • The search box finds a tracking number, a carrier, the carrier’s shipment ID, or an exact order number.
  • All statuses: show one status only.
  • Account: all: show the shipments of one courier account.
  • More filters: Dispatched from, Dispatched to, Carrier and Recipient country. Click Apply, or Clear to remove them. The date filters only match shipments that have been dispatched.
  • Problems only: show shipments with the status Delivery failed, Exception or Lost. The badge on the button counts them across all your shipments.
The checkboxes select shipments for printing; see Print many labels at once. The export button does nothing yet: export is not available.

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Shipment details

Click a row to open the shipment’s details on the right:
  • the status, the carrier and the tracking number, with a copy button;
  • Print label, or Print when it arrives while the carrier has not sent the label; see Print labels. Without printing, Download PDF replaces it. No label (external) means no label will come: the shipment is external, or it was cancelled before the label arrived;
  • Order #, which opens the order, and Cancel; see Cancel a shipment;
  • Recipient, Parcel (weight and dimensions), Cash on delivery and Insurance. The recipient shows (anonymized) when the shipment has no recipient name;
  • Tracking history, newest first. Each event shows its status, date and time, the carrier’s description and place, and the carrier’s own status code.
Close the details with × or Escape. Press P to print the label.

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Statuses

Omnilinker translates each carrier’s tracking codes into one set of statuses. The carrier’s own code is kept on every tracking event.

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Tracking

Omnilinker asks the carriers for tracking updates every 20 minutes. Carriers do not push updates to Omnilinker, so a new status can take up to 20 minutes to appear.
  • Shipments created in the last 30 days are checked every 20 minutes.
  • Shipments 30 to 60 days old are checked once a day.
  • Shipments older than 60 days are no longer checked.
  • Tracking stops when a shipment is Delivered, Lost or Canceled.
Some shipments are never tracked:
  • DPD: tracking is not available yet, so DPD shipments stay at Label created.
  • External shipments: you set their status yourself.
  • Shipments of a deleted courier account.
Omnilinker does not send tracking e-mails to the buyer. For an order imported from a marketplace, Omnilinker sends the tracking number to the marketplace when the shipment’s status first changes.

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What happens to the order

A shipment counts as dispatched when its first tracking update shows it past Label created, or, for an external shipment, when you enter its Dispatched date. Omnilinker then fills in the Dispatched date. To move the order forward at that moment, turn on Auto-mark orders as Sent on dispatch:
1

Open the automation settings

Open Sales > Order statuses and choose the Automation tab. You need the Manage statuses permission.
2

Turn the setting on

Select Auto-mark orders as Sent on dispatch. It is off by default.
With the setting on, when a shipment of an order is dispatched, Omnilinker changes the order to your Sent-type status. That also turns the order’s reserved stock into a deduction. Nothing changes if the order already has a Sent- or Delivered-type status, or if you have no Sent-type status. See Order settings. Cancelling a shipment does not change the order’s status.

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Cancel a shipment

On the Shipments list, open the shipment and click Cancel. Confirm in Cancel this shipment with the courier? with Cancel shipment, or click Back. The shipment gets the status Canceled. You can also click Cancel in the order’s Shipments section. It cancels straight away, without asking. Cancellation unavailable replaces the button when the carrier does not support it or the shipment is already Delivered, Being returned, Lost or Canceled. You need the Cancel shipments permission.

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Troubleshooting

The carrier rejected the account’s credentials. Test the account on Shipments > Courier accounts and replace the credentials if the test fails. For InPost, check that Environment matches the credentials: production credentials do not work in Sandbox.
Omnilinker or the carrier found the shipment data incomplete. Common causes:
  • An InPost locker service without a Parcel locker / pickup point.
  • A DPD or Apaczka shipment: these need a sender address that you cannot enter yet.
  • The carrier rejected the data, for example the recipient’s address or phone number.
Fix the order’s delivery details, then create the shipment again.
The carrier returned an error. The message ends with the carrier’s reason. Correct the data it names, then try again. If the reason is NoOffersAvailable, InPost offered no service for this parcel; check the service, the parcel and the locker code.
Omnilinker could not get the services from the carrier. Select the account again, and test it on the Courier accounts page.
The dialog keeps “waiting for the courier to confirm the label”, and the Label column shows Label pending. Omnilinker retries in the background for a while; check the shipment on the Shipments list later. To have the label printed as soon as it comes, click Print when it arrives in the shipment details. If the carrier cancelled the shipment before confirming the label, no label will come. “The shipment label is not ready yet.” means the label has not been fetched yet.
The carrier does not accept cancellations from Omnilinker, or rejected this one. Cancel the shipment in the carrier’s panel.
Tracking updates every 20 minutes. DPD shipments, external shipments, shipments older than 60 days and shipments of a deleted courier account are not tracked; see Tracking.
Each account of a carrier needs its own name. Choose a different Name.

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Permissions

The courier account permissions are in Courier accounts.