The Ultimate Fulfilment Checklist

Sending parcels should be the last thing you have to worry about, regardless if you’re in ecommerce or logistics.

Shipping shouldn’t be an expensive or complicated process. While there are no one-size fits all solutions, there are fundamentals that should be incorporated into everyone’s fulfilment checklist. Some examples include choosing suppliers and inputting product dimensions into your software.

If you don’t have a fulfilment checklist or your existing one is in dire need of an update, borrow this one and get your shipping back on track.

Integrate Your Shipping Software

You don’t want to switch between multiple tabs to send a parcel. Especially if you sell products across several ecommerce platforms. Take a moment to integrate your fulfilment software with your provider, whether it be Shopify, eBay, or WooCommerce.

If integration isn’t an option, then prepare a CSV template that you can use over and over again. Ensure that it includes all the necessary details required to ship a parcel. It will save you hours and let you focus on the parts of your business that matter most to you.

Add Parcel Presets and Product Dimensions

If you use the same packaging for your shipments, then it will save you a lot of time if you input the dimensions into your fulfilment software. You’ll want to give it a descriptive title and include the weight, length, height, and width. This information is useful for platforms like Interparcel, where you can utilise features like Smart Boxing. Our algorithm will provide the most efficient way to pack your parcel.

Uploading your product dimensions is also required to use this feature. You can include this information in the ecommerce platform or add the details in our software. It’s even possible to upload the data via a CSV file if you sell dozens and dozens of products.

Choose Your Courier Services

When you need to ship a parcel, you want access to your preferred courier services quickly and easily. You don’t want to be scrolling through pages of options. With Interparcel, you can choose how a courier company is selected based on your unique criteria.

You can select the first found service based on the parcel information or the cheapest option available. You can even choose the above criteria based on certain courier services. For example, if you’ve had excellent experiences with TNT and Couriers Please, then you can only decide to select one of these providers.

Update Your Address Book

If you’re a logistics manager responsible for shipping parcels to other branches of your organisation, then it’s likely you know the address of every office off the top of your head. However, to save more time in your day, you can rid your memory of this useless information and store it in the address book of the shipping platform.

Next time you have to send a bulk order interstate or overseas, you can simply select the address instead of typing it out. If this information is stored on a CSV, you can save even more hours in your day by uploading it to the shipping platform.

Design Your Branded Tracking Page

The final step of the fulfilment checklist is for your customers. They will want to know where their parcel is the moment the money has been taken from their bank account. You could design some email templates to provide them with updates. But it will take you a lot of time to respond to every customer with a personalised notification about where their parcel is.

A better solution is to use the Branded Tracking portal. It can let customers know where their parcel is throughout its journey. The best part is that you can design this web page to match your brand. Select the colours and upload your logo so customers know it’s affiliated with your business. You can even include special offers via banners to entice them to shop with you again.

Start Ticking Off Your Fulfilment Checklist

The ultimate fulfilment checklist is not something that you should use for every parcel you have to send. It should provide you with steps that help you spend less time on bureaucracy and manual processes and more on the parts of the business that require your attention. Schedule time to complete these tasks so you can grow your company, support your team, and achieve your goals.

With Interparcel’s multicarrier shipping solutions, you get access to multiple respected courier companies, one-click integration with popular ecommerce platforms, customisable tracking notifications, and more. The best part is that it’s free to use. Head to this page to start ticking off the steps on your fulfilment checklist.