Shipping overview, ready to ship and parcels that need attention

Shipping in the sidebar opens the Shipping overview. It answers two questions: which paid orders still need to go out, and where the parcels you already sent are. What you see depends on whether you have connected a carrier app.

A carrier app is optional. Most stores never connect one: they price delivery with their own zones and rates and type in a tracking number by hand. The overview works for both kinds of store. Only the carrier version has labels, parcels and postage figures, because those only exist once Brainerce buys a label.

The overview without a carrier app

The page title has a Zones & rates button opposite it, in place of the carrier pill described below. The headline says how many paid orders are waiting.

• Awaiting shipment lists paid orders that have no tracking number yet. Each row has an Add tracking button, which opens the same tracking window as the order itself: enter the tracking number and carrier, and the order moves to Shipped. You need permission to update order status to see the button.
• When nothing is waiting it says Every paid order has shipped. Nothing waiting on you.
• At the bottom, Connect a carrier for live rates and printable labels with a Browse apps button.

There is no parcel list, no In transit figure and no postage figure in this version. Brainerce only records parcels when it buys a label, and without a carrier it buys none. Nothing is missing because of a fault.

The overview with a carrier app

The header: one pill for the carrier and its settings

The page title Shipping has one pill opposite it: the carrier's icon and name, with a green dot. Press it to open a panel. Everything you change about a carrier is in this panel. There is no separate Settings icon, Settings for dropdown or Zones & rates button next to the title any more.

• Settings for: shown only when you have connected more than one carrier. Pick the carrier you want to look at. It changes only what is on screen, not which carrier buys a label.
• Automatic labels: Off, I buy each label myself, 30 minutes after payment (recommended) or Right after payment. A choice is saved the moment you press it. Setting the number of minutes is in Settings.
• Zones & rates: opens your zones and rates.
• Settings: the carrier's full settings, including the connection details, Priority and Deliver only to these countries.
• A line saying where parcels are collected: your ship-from address or, for a carrier that collects from the address in your contract, a note to ask the carrier to change it.
• Browse apps, to connect another carrier.

The headline and the four lists

Under the title a headline says N orders are waiting to ship, or Every paid order has shipped when nothing is waiting. Beneath it are a few figures:

• In transit counts parcels the carrier has actually picked up (in transit or out for delivery). A label that is bought but not yet scanned is not counted here, because it is still waiting for the courier.
• Delivered.
• Need attention, shown only when something is wrong. Press it to open that list.
• Shipping margin compares what customers paid for shipping with what the carrier billed (shown only once at least one parcel has both numbers in the same currency). Without it, a carrier that bills you by the label shows Postage spend. A carrier that bills you under your own contract, like HFD and Cheetah, shows no spend figure.

The page is then split into four lists, each tab with its count. It opens on the first one that has something in it: orders waiting for a label, then anything wrong, then parcels on the way.

Each list shows up to 30 rows, newest first.

There is no button to buy several labels at once and no tick boxes on the rows. Buy each label from its own row.

Ready to ship

Ready to ship lists paid orders that have no tracking number and are still in a status that can be shipped (Pending, Processing, Paid or On hold). Each row shows the first product's picture and name, the order number, the city and how long ago the order came in.

• It reads your 100 most recent orders. An unshipped order older than that does not show here, so open Orders for anything old.
• An order that was imported read-only from another platform never shows here.
• Buy label opens the Create Shipping Label window. Billing for the label goes directly to your carrier account. See Order status and shipping.

Need attention

This list holds up to 30 rows, worst first:

The rows are a warning, not a to-do list: there is no button on them. Open the order from Orders to act on it.

When a label cost more than the customer paid for shipping, the same list shows a second group, Costing more than you charged, worst first, as Charged $4.40, billed $4.90. The usual cause is that the parcel size used for the quote at checkout is not the size that shipped, because carriers bill on dimensions as well as weight. Fill in the weight and size of your products, or the default package size in the carrier's settings, to close the gap. Only parcels where both amounts are in the same currency are compared, so a gap that is only exchange rate never appears here.

Parcels

The In transit and Delivered and cancelled lists show the order number, destination, carrier, service and tracking number. The status is one of Label ready, Shipment created (the carrier booked it but gave no printable label), Label not ready, In transit, Out for delivery, Delivered or Cancelled. A parcel the carrier lost or sent back is under Need attention, not here.

• Print label is shown only while the status is Label ready. After the carrier scans the parcel the link goes away, because the label is no longer needed.
• Get label appears on Label not ready. The carrier booked and billed the shipment but has not handed over the label yet. Press it again in a minute. Nothing is lost.
• Cancel shipment is shown while the parcel has not been picked up yet: on Label ready, Shipment created and Label not ready. It is not shown on a parcel from a carrier that cannot be cancelled from Brainerce, such as Shippo. Brainerce asks the carrier to cancel, and you confirm first. See below.

You can only see the latest parcels here. The full parcel table (Shipping → Shipments) is a staff-only page, so ask support if you need an older parcel. See Shipments.

Cancel a shipment and void its label

1. On Shipping, open the In transit tab and find the parcel. It must not have been picked up yet (Label ready, Shipment created or Label not ready).
2. Press Cancel shipment. You need permission to fulfil orders.
3. Read the confirmation, which names the carrier and the tracking number, and press Cancel shipment again.

This only works while the courier has not collected the parcel. If the carrier refuses, nothing changes and you see the carrier's reason. The cancellation is the carrier's decision, not Brainerce's.

• EasyPost, HFD and Cheetah support cancelling from Brainerce. HFD and Cheetah must have cancelling switched on for your account on their side.
• Shippo labels cannot be cancelled from Brainerce. There is no Cancel shipment link on a Shippo parcel, because Shippo has no cancel step for Brainerce to call. Void the label in your Shippo account. The same goes for any carrier app that does not support cancelling.
• A tracking number you typed in by hand has no label to cancel. Correct or clear it on the order.

Ship-from address

If a carrier is connected and Brainerce has no address to ship from, a yellow panel appears: Nobody can be quoted a shipping price right now. Without an address the carrier cannot price a delivery at checkout and cannot buy a label.

Fill in Street address, City, Postal code, Country and Phone and press Save address. Street, city, postal code and country are required. The phone is optional but needed for parcels going abroad. The panel disappears once the address is saved. You need permission to manage integrations to save it.

• The address is stored on your warehouse, not on the carrier. If you install two carriers you type it once.
• If you have no warehouse yet, saving the address creates one for you, named after your store (for example "My Shop Warehouse") and marked as the default. It counts toward your plan's warehouse limit. If you already have a warehouse, only its address changes: it is never renamed or promoted. See Warehouses.
• When an order was allocated from a particular warehouse, the parcel ships from that warehouse if it has a complete address. Otherwise it ships from your default warehouse (the one marked in the Default column of Inventory, Warehouses; change it with Set as default).
• Cheetah and HFD are different: no ship-from address is asked for, because they collect from the address on your own contract. The carrier pill's panel shows a note about pickup with a line to ask the carrier to change it. See Connect Cheetah and Connect HFD.

The carrier pill: ship-from address and automatic labels

The carrier pill at the top of the overview opens the panel described above. Two things there matter most:

• Ship-from address (or a Pickup note for a carrier that collects from your contract address). It shows Not set in Settings until you add one.
• Automatic labels: Off, I buy each label myself, 30 minutes after payment (recommended) or Right after payment. In the delay mode you set the number of minutes, from 1 to 1440, in Settings.

Automatic buying spends your carrier balance with nobody clicking. With a prepaid carrier like EasyPost or Shippo, an empty balance means orders stop shipping and nothing tells you, so keep auto-reload on. The panel repeats this warning under the options. A carrier you pay under your own contract has no balance to run dry. Brainerce never buys automatically for an order that was cancelled, refunded, collected in person, already shipped by hand, or has only digital items. A failed automatic purchase appears under Need attention and never stops the order itself.

The carrier's Settings also hold its Priority and Deliver only to these countries fields. They only matter when you have more than one carrier. See Connect Shippo or EasyPost.

What the overview does not do

• No return labels in the dashboard. There is no button to buy a return label. Return labels exist only for EasyPost, and only through the admin MCP tool create_return_label, the AI assistant, or the SDK in admin mode (createReturnLabel). They are not on the public /v1 API, and the carrier account pays for them.
• No buying several labels at once. Each label is bought from its own row.
• No automatic address checking. Brainerce does not verify that a customer's address is real before you buy a label.
• No parcel table for merchants. The overview shows the latest parcels only.

What's next?

• Set up shipping zones and rates
• Order status and shipping

Need a hand? Email [email protected].