If I have a sale from another source (that is not Amazon or other shopify supported and link-able channel), can I purchase and print shipping label without creating a shopify sales?
Or if I create a shopify sale for it will I be charged a fee by shopify?
Hey, @sungksoh
Eunice here from the Shopify support team. Thanks for posting!
Yes, if you make a sale outside of Shopify, you can still purchase and print a shipping label from your Shopify admin, providing your account is set up for Shopify Shipping.
To be able to purchase a shipping label, you first of all need to record the sale in your Shopify admin by creating a draft order. When you’re creating the draft order you’ll notice that you can add a product from your Shopify inventory, or add a custom item. If you’re adding a custom item, you’ll need to add it you your Shopify inventory so the weight of the product can be applied.
Next, you’ll need to add the customer’s name and address, and then add shipping. The system will calculate the shipping rates for you based on the customer’s address you have entered, as well as the weight of the product. Simply choose the shipping rate you’d like to pay.
Once you’ve added the product, customer address, and shipping rate, you then need to mark the draft order as paid. This will tell the system that you have accepted payment outside of Shopify and will transform the draft order into an actual order. From here, just head to the order and purchase a shipping label as usual.
I’m happy to confirm you won’t be charged any transaction fees. This is because you wouldn’t be using the checkout system for any sales made outside of Shopify. The only thing you will be charged for in this case would be the shipping label.
I hope this helps! If you have any questions please feel free to reach out.
All the best,
It would be nice to not have an order associated with a shipping label. I would like to request that Shopify create an option to purchase labels not associated with an order.
I agree! Having to go through all the steps mentioned above, just to purchase a “non-order” shipping label is too much!
Hi there, thanks for this helpful information @Eunice how can I do this without sending the automatic emails to my customers that their order is confirmed and shipping is on the way?
This works great. My only concern is, does the revenue for the purchase get added to the monthly totals even though you did not collect any?
I agree. it throws your stats off for number of sales too.
I would also like to be able to create a shipping label without an order.
For everyone struggling with this, one idea to help correct the revenue would be just to apply a 100% discount. It’s an imperfect solution but at least your revenue/taxes won’t be impacted.
If you make shipping label with a custom item that is $0.00 that should work too.
But how do we pay for the shipping of 100% discounted sale, rather than the buyer?
@Eunice - I actually want to just mail a box of materials to my factory - no customers or orders involved. How do I just print and pay for a mailing label for that?
I just found this thread while trying to figure out how to send an influencer some products at no cost (plus trying to figure this out for other situations as well).
I read everything here and the people who said to apply a 100% discount are correct. I know this because after reading all this I then went and asked the Shopify Help Center AI Chat Bot the same question (I specifically asked “I need to send a few products to an influencer. This means they will not pay for them as I am giving the products to them. What is the best way to go about doing that?”).
The AI chat bot responded with:
Now, if you are also like me and want to, on occasion, send random friends/family packages of stuff and you want to get your nice Shopify shipping discounts, basically Shopify is NOT set up for that (and they likely don’t want to be used like that). That being said, you can get around that by creating the $0 Custom Item many others have mentioned in this thread. There is no way around it, again, because Shopify is not primarily a shipping system (say, like a ShipStation is) thus this is not what Shopify wants us to do on their platform, thus they don’t make that use case easy.
Anyway, since the Shopify person didn’t reply to the more specific questions on this thread I figured I would add what I learned (and interpreted).
I hope that help!
One important followup to my above post.
If, like me, you already have some orders that you processed and shipped (meaning that they are considered “Archived” orders, and thus can not be edited), the way to adjust the pricing to $0 on those is to issue a refund.
This is another one I asked Shopify’s AI Chat Bot about and they had a surprisingly clear answer about. Here is the screenshot from that as well:
These are complicated and detailed situations, so, again, I hope this helps.
I know I’m learning a ton through all this ?
so helpful! thank you!
