Shippo + Square Q&A: Ask Shippo about shipping, returns, tracking and labeling!

[Tom]

Hello Sellers! On Tuesday, September 28th, we hosted a Q&A with Michael Hathaway (@Shippo_Mike) on the Shippo team for an event focused on all of your business shipping needs.

Prior to joining Shippo, Michael acquired a wide range of experience within software as a service and financial sales. He's a champion of the seller experience and passionate about keeping the customer's voice at the center of product decisions. For a deeper dive on his journey, check out this post: What It’s Like to Work for Shippo’s Sales Team, According to Mike Hathaway.

The Shippo team released a lot of features and integrations over the course of 2020, and they're here to make sure you get the most out of your fulfillment needs. You can learn more about their feature set in this recent webinar: E-Commerce Shipping Strategy 101 with Square & Shippo.

[ToddZ]

My biz has an account with UPS where we have a discount. However, when we connected our account to Shippo, the rates shown were higher than what we get at UPS.com. It's a pain to take orders in Square Online and then switch over to UPS for shipping. What's the deal? What percentage is Shippo adding on to shipment costs?

[Shippo_Mike]

Hey there @ToddZ,

Thanks for reaching out! This is a great question!

First, Shippo provides discounts automatically for UPS Shipments as you sign-up for Shippo. You can find the discounted Shippo account within your Settings → Carriers tab of Shippo.

Second, Shippo does not add any margin to your existing rates with a carrier, whether that is UPS or any other provider. You can connect your account to Shippo, in the Settings → Carriers tab of Shippo, and see your rates compared against Shippo’s discounted services. You can even connect multiple of your carrier accounts to compare and purchase postage.

Third, your account seems to have a specific issue, where the rates are not coming through UPS’s API correctly- if you reach out to support@goshippo.com, our team can work directly with UPS to make sure your rates are accurately reflected in Shippo. In the meantime, you can purchase postage through Shippo with your UPS account- you are charged the pre-set rates on your account, not what is shown in Shippo (if we are reflecting those incorrectly)- so no worries about the inflated pricing when it comes to your actual billing through UPS.

Please feel free to let us know if you are still having this issue and we can get it cleared up for you!

[ToddZ]

Great. I will be reaching out to them, Mike. Thank you.

[HC_Charlie]

What a great topic! Looking forward to this! I've been using Shippo for a few month now and I really like. It integrates with not only Square, but I also sell on Etsy and that integration works well also. My question is for Square orders shipped through Shippo. I don't have an upgraded Weebly site (that includes shipping from the site), so I go into Shippo separately to ship my Square orders. Is there a way to receive a CC copy of all notification emails sent to my customers? Sometimes my customers later email wanting a tracking number, and I think they should automatically get the tracking number in an auto generated email from Shippo or Square. I would like to be able to receive copies of any email that is sent to my customers about their orders...Is this possible? Thanks!

[Shippo_Mike]

Hey @HC_Charlie,

Thanks for reaching out and happy to help! I can answer how to manage this process within Shippo, and I will let the Square team chat about managing the process within their platform!

You can always include an additional email within the Order information to be cc’ed on the Notification email. This would be added with a “;” in the email section of the Address information. This email address is not sent to the customer or printed on the label.

Additionally, our team is doing a major overhaul to our Notifications system in Q1 so you should see some exciting things coming soon!

[TLBB2018]

We have been using weebly/square for close to 3 years now & love that it integrates with our square online store. We have noticed with both UPS and USPS we aren't getting any discounts OR if they are showing up it is for one option only. We currently pay for the "Performance" level site on weebly & it continually pushes us to upgrade for discounts....but what are the actual discounts Shippo offers per level?  We have connected our own accounts to shippo as well & we still have the same issue unless we export orders & do shipping within UPS/USPS websites which is a hassle. 

[Shippo_Mike]

@TLBB2018-- Thanks for reaching out!

This is a big question and mostly is specific to your account. First, Shippo provides the lowest available aggregated rates for UPS and USPS for all of our users. They are not marked up, whether they are accessed through Shippo or Weebly/Square.

Second, it sounds like there might be something going on with your account rates! Can you reach out to our team to give us an overview of the issue and let us know the rates that are not being reflected within your account correctly? We can take a look, verify the discounts are applied and cross-check your rates to compare and purchase against! We would be happy to help make this easier for you!

[Tom]

Dropping in a question related to other topics we've seen in the Seller Community: "How do I calculate shipping?"

Any resources or best practices that Shippo can offer with regard to shipping calculation?

cc: @BlvdJoe 

[Shippo_Mike]

@BlvdJoe!

Asking the real questions! I love this question on the Shippo end because there is no exact answer. Each business will want to decide how and what they charge for shipping based on their own business model. Square provides many different options to set up the shipping rates within the shopping cart experience (thanks Tom for linking above/below), but choosing the right one is always a difficult process.

Businesses will choose what they need to optimize for, generally, it falls into 3 categories:
-Increasing Cart Conversion
-Always Covering the Shipping Cost
-Drop-Shipping Items

If you want to increase cart conversion, choosing a Flat Rate, Free Shipping, or Free Shipping at a threshold option may be for you. The #1 item that buyers reference when deciding on a purchase in the shopping cart is the Shipping fee. Making that a round number, through a flat rate, or eliminating it completely, through a free shipping option- makes the decision easier on the buyer. Using the Free Shipping at a threshold can encourage buyers to add additional items to their purchase. Figuring out the flat rate to charge or the amount to bake into your item’s cost is also an easy process. Generally, we recommend that folks sign in to Shippo, use the Create Label button to generate a variety of “test” orders to various locations across the country (I use baseball stadiums in New York (Go Yankees), Chicago, Texas, Florida, Denver, California, and then an address in Nashville). From there, plug in your package size and weight, then average the cost! Either use that to increase the cost of your items or round up/down to add as a whole number as a flat rate cost.

If you are shipping something heavy or a complicated order, you may want to use Live Rates. These will use the actual shipping rates you pay for the label as a quote to the customer in the checkout. This ensures your cost is always covered, regardless of where you send the item. Live rates are not a round numbers (in most cases) and require having the box dimensions and weight set for each of your items. It can add a substantial cost to an order if the items are heavy so keep that in mind as you are creating and curating this experience for your buyers.

Finally, if you are dropshipping- your drop shipper should be able to provide you the standard cost they will charge or pay for shipping. You can use that to bake into your item cost or set as a flat rate, as mentioned in the previous example.

This is a complicated question and we are lucky enough to live in a world where there are thousands of resources on making this decision! Generally, a quick google search or an evaluation of a competitor store will be able to give you a guiding light for this decision-making process!

[Kissthefrog]

I am a small business. What equipment do I need to have shippo? What is the average cost? Basically how does it work

[Shippo_Mike]

@Kissthefrog -Thanks for reaching out and would love to help! Shippo’s platform, by default, generates shipping labels on a regular (8.5” x 11”) sheet of paper- so as long as you have access to a printer, you have everything you need! We do work with most other label printers as well! You do also need to know the weight of your items- so sometimes a scale is helpful as well.

The average cost is VERY dependent on the volume and weight of your shipments. The heavier your shipments, the higher the cost- as a general rule. You can sign-up for Shippo for free so I would recommend popping in, using the CREATE LABEL button in the top right corner of your account to create a few sample shipments to see if we are a good option for your business! We have the lowest USPS and UPS rates available- so generally, we can provide some cost savings on the shipping rates!

[partyjumpjump]

Hi there, how do I keep low cost on shipping when there is not a high volume of shipping? Sometimes the shipping is more expensive than the item cost.

[Shippo_Mike]

@partyjumpjump-appreciate the question and this is a tricky one to answer without knowing more details about your business.

I can say, as a general rule, if you are shipping very low-cost items, it is a good idea to bake some of the shipping cost into the item cost listed on your site. That way, you can charge a Flat Rate for shipping that shows up as a lower cost than your item (or better yet, offer free shipping). This just requires doing a few test shipments or test orders to see the overall costs of your shipments by location- average those out, and boom! You should be good to add that as a Flat Rate or bake it into your item cost.

To keep shipping costs low- use your own packaging, keep the package as lightweight as possible, try to avoid express shipping, and check across all of your carrier options!

[TarahLee]

Does it work in Canada?

[Shippo_Mike]

@TarahLee- it sure does!  Shippo provides access to Canada Post rates and, if you have your own account, you can add it in the Settings → Carriers tab of Shippo!

[goodcrowd]

Why isn’t there an ounce option when entering the weight for a package? Also, when printing from Square POS there doesn’t appear to be a way to format the labels for a regular printer using 8.5x11 paper.

[Shippo_Mike]

@goodcrowd- Thanks for reaching out and chatting in about a hotly discussed topic by our Product Team.  We have many customers that have expressed interest in offering shipping costs by ounces or by full pounds-  In Shippo’s platform, you can choose the weight unit you would like to enter in the Settings → Labels tab of Shippo! 

I can’t tell if you are creating these labels directly from Weebly/Square or Shippo’s application- but I will let the Square team hop in to answer your other question and provide any context I may have missed on the first one!

[BofBArtStudio]

I am excited for this Q&A

 Ihave been using Shippo for about a year now.  It works well and is easy to use, and the orders show integrate over, so I can just choose and order to ship.  I love that I can print to our standard printer on 8.5x11 paper.   I do wish I could get a receipt for each shipment.  It seems that over an unknown period of time, all shipments are bundled together into one invoice from Shippo.   

Overall, we love the service and it's ease of use and pricing.

[Shippo_Mike]

Hey there Cheryl, thanks for being part of our Bloat (not a great word, but that’s what a group of Hippos is called)!

You can always access your invoices, see pending charges, or view refunds in the Settings → Account tab of Shippo-- in the middle of your screen, you will see an option for Billing. In the Billing tab, you can view all of your transactions, see what is pending, and print out receipts!

To find out more about our Billing Cycles- follow this link: https://support.goshippo.com/hc/en-us/articles/360003859092-Shippo-Billing-Cycles

@BofBArtStudio 

[cocosnap]

I have been using Square/Weebly with Shippo for nearly a year now, and love the integration. There is one major thing I am missing that would be SUPER helpful before the holidays. 

I am a chocolate shop, and I get a LOT of custom phone orders for the Holiday Season. Items that are in my POS, but not available online. It would be really awesome to be able to take the order on my square register and have a SHIP option, just like we have  the pickup/delivery option. This way, we could input the address into Square and it would seamlessly merge to Shippo like the online orders do.

Currently we are left with taking a phone order, quickly & manually tallying our shipping rate, and then manually taking the shipping address down, or adding it in as a note to the customer profile. When the product is packed and ready to ship, we then have to go to shippo and input the address again manually. When you're shipping 50-100 boxes a day, the time really adds up.

I've spoken with many different Square Support members and have yet to find a logical work-around. Any thoughts?