X-Cart:Shipping Label Generator

Overview

X-Cart's Shipping Label Generator module allows you to create and print shipping labels for orders whose shipping option is defined as UPS, USPS or DHL/Airborne and uses real-time calculated shipping rates.

You probably already know that X-Cart has a standard functionality for generating shipping labels: the button Quick labels for selected in the Orders Management section allows administrators and providers to create shipping labels for selected orders. The process of generating the labels is very quick, as it is performed by X-Cart internally, without exchanging any data with the servers of carrier companies.

The disadvantage of quick labels is that they have the most basic design and do not provide such all-round information about shipments as can be provided by shipping labels generated by specialized software. Shipping Label Generator module is an extension to X-Cart's shipping label printing functionality that provides you the ability to create good-looking and information-rich shipping labels for the most popular shipping methods like UPS, USPS or DHL/Airborne.

To use the module, you need to have accounts with those shipping services for which you want to be able to get shipping labels. The account information is entered into X-Cart and is stored there permanently so the module can use it automatically. When you tell the module to generate a shipping label, the module uses your account information to contact the respective shipping service server or (in the case of UPS) to generate a CSV-formatted data file that can be imported into an external program that will contact the shipping label generating server of the shipping service provider company. The shipping service server processes the information received from X-Cart, generates the required shipping label and sends it back to the application that has submitted the request (X-Cart for USPS and DHL/Airborne; UPS WorldShip for UPS). After that you can freely download the shipping label onto your computer and print it out.

Note: please remember that shipping labels can be generated only for real-time calculated shipping methods.

Roles in Shipping Label Generator module management

If you are an X-Cart GOLD administrator/provider or an X-Cart PRO administrator:

• You can enable/disable the module Shipping Label Generator and adjust its configuration settings (See #Enabling and Configuring 'Shipping Label Generator').
• You can generate/regenerate shipping labels for any orders in the store (Study #Generating Shipping Labels).

If you are an X-Cart PRO provider:

• You can generate/regenerate shipping labels for any of your orders (Study #Generating Shipping Labels).